


Girl's Day Out

by Awesome_Sauce432



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Brief Nonconsensual Drugging, Dimension 20 Big Bang, Gen, Girl's Day Out, Kidnapping, Lighthearted, Rescue Mission, Teenager shenanigans, These Girls Are Too Used To Danger, scavenger hunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:21:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28160865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Awesome_Sauce432/pseuds/Awesome_Sauce432
Summary: Every year, Aguefort Adventuring Academy is let loose on the world for one day in the name of bonding experiences and education. Last year, both the Bad Kids and the Seven Maidens missed the event, thanks to being kidnapped or imprisoned. This year, the Maidens and the ladies of the Bad Kids (plus some extras) end up split between two teams for a city-wide scavenger hunt.Of course, things don't go to plan.
Relationships: Ayda Aguefort/Figueroth Faeth
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22
Collections: Dimension 20 Big Bang





	Girl's Day Out

**Author's Note:**

> I swear I had this concept all ready to go and outlined out before the Boy's Night Out one-shot. But it's different so there.

“Twenty minutes, everyone!” Miss Jones called out from the front of the bus, sending an excited murmur through all the students that were actually paying attention. 

“We’re nearly there!” Antiope said, sitting directly to Sam’s right with her face pressed up against the window. “This is so exciting!”

Sam hummed an absent agreement, focusing intently on Danielle’s fingernails in front of her, the nail polish wand carefully poised above them and the bottle delicately balancing on her lap. “You have to remind me to take you to my favourite bakery. We visit every time we come back here.” 

“We won’t have any time for bakery visits, Sam.” Penny’s head popped up from the bus seats in front of her, looking seriously competitive. “This is a competition, not a vacation.” 

“Of course, of course,” Sam said, deciding not to mention her plan to get eliminated as quickly as possible so that she could do something fun rather than whatever nonsense Aguefort had cooked up this year. 

The bus ran over something bumpy, and Sam gasped, frantically reaching for the nail polish bottle before it could spill. Danielle took her hand back to admire the process, ‘ooh’ing appreciatively before twisting around her seat to look behind her. “Zelda, Toast, Gorgug, look!” 

In the seats behind Danielle (and Katja, who had been trying very hard to nap for the entire trip thus far), Zelda and her boyfriend didn’t look up until Danielle waved her hands in their faces, removing headphones and earbuds.

“Oh, it looks great Dani,” Zelda said, holding up Danielle’s pet grey fox, Toast, for his approval. “Toast thinks so too.”

Gorgug gave her a small thumbs-up, and Danielle seemed pleased by the feedback, dropping back into her seat and letting Sam tug her hand over again to finish the job. 

Throughout the bus, the students of Aguefort Academy were rife with anticipation. Almost every single registered adventuring party in the school was spread out through an armada of buses heading towards the unlucky Bastion City. 

“I wish they would hurry up and tell us what we’re going to be doing!” Ostentatia’s voice came from the seats in front, not for the first time this trip. “We’re soooo close.”

“Which means we only have to wait, like, twenty more minutes,” Sam said, finishing the last few nails on Danielle’s hand. “There, all done. Now you can do this horror show in style.”

“It’s not gonna be _bad,_ is it?” Now Ostentatia was poking over the back of the seats, a frown crossing her face. “It’s just supposed to be a challenge, isn’t it?”

“An _Aguefort_ challenge,” Sam said. “It’s chaos.”

“The one year I did it, it was a relay race,” Antiope said cheerfully. “I was the only one in my old party that didn’t get lost.”

“I ended up in the Ethereal Plane for three hours,” Penny said. 

“And the year before that was hide and seek,” Sam said. She’d only been a sophomore then. So naive. “It took weeks.” 

“The relay race was fun,” Danielle said brightly. “And I’m just excited to do it with you guys this year!” 

“Unless Aguefort decided to split everyone up by year level again. He did that my freshman year.” Penny said, and Danielle’s face fell. “But- I mean, he probably won’t.” 

“It’s in Bastion City this year, it won’t be _too_ hectic,” Sam said, waving a hand dismissively. “Aguefort’s still in trouble for the sun-dragging thing in Fallinel, so there can’t be too much property damage.” 

Chatter began to settle down again, even if Ostentatia was still bristling for any kind of clue as to what they were supposed to be doing. But Sam wasn’t bothered. She and the rest of the Maidens had missed last year’s Annual Event — the real name was extraordinarily long and unwieldy and no one used it — due to the whole kidnapping thing, and she’d almost forgotten about it entirely until everyone had started gearing up for it this year.

It was supposed to be one of the final hurrahs of the school year, one big event for everyone to participate in a few weeks before graduation, bond as an adventuring party or a year group, and maybe snag some extra credit if you’d been doing particularly poorly in your classes. It was also an excuse for Aguefort to let the school population loose on the unsuspecting world once a year in the name of education. 

“Hey, some of the buses are turning off.” Antiope pointed out the window, and Sam leaned over her shoulder to see some of the buses ahead of them indeed pulling off into different exits. As time passed, more buses split off until only one or two remained in sight. 

“The whole school must be being spread out throughout the city,” Penny said, her and Ostentatia pressing their faces against the window to get a closer look. 

“Maybe it’ll be like capture the flag!” Sam heard someone call out from elsewhere on the bus. “And everyone on this bus is one team!” 

“Or maybe we need to find the other teams and tag them out?” That was Fig, not wearing a seatbelt and looking very excited. The Bad Kids were all on their bus as well, mostly because Zelda had followed Gorgug and the rest of the Maidens had followed Zelda. There were a couple of other adventuring parties of random kids that Sam didn’t recognise very well, and then two notable exceptions.

One was Ayda, who Sam mostly knew as the cool phoenix girl that had kissed Fig on a livestream in the Nightmare Forest while they’d been resurrecting Riz. Ayda, unlike her girlfriend, _was_ wearing a seatbelt, though her wings were a bit unwieldy in the bus, and Sam was pretty sure she was only on the trip because she thought such an event would be interesting and she wanted to spend time with Fig and the other Bad Kids.

The _other_ exception was one Aelwyn Abernant, who Sam had spent most of the year hating by proxy for her involvement in the whole, you know, kidnapping thing, even though Sam had never interacted with her. But Ostentatia had held a massive grudge, so Sam had held one in solidarity. At least until the Bad Kids went on their spring break trip, saved the world, and returned with Aelwyn in tow, apparently redeemed. 

Sam had interacted with Aelwyn only a few times since then, the wizard mostly keeping her distance from the Maidens and giving them all a stiff apology once and teleporting away before they could respond. Ostentatia had settled down about it since then, so Sam and the others had mostly dropped it too. Unlike Ayda, Aelwyn did not seem thrilled to be here at all and Sam could only imagine how she’d ended up on the bus to begin with. 

Speculation continued until the bus finally pulled to a stop in front of a large courtyard of some kind, a rarity in the cramped and bustling Bastion City. There was a confusing metal statue of some kind in the middle and a few people milling about, most of whom saw the gang of teenagers piling off the bus and promptly made themselves scarce. 

“Everyone gather round!” The wizarding teacher, Professor Runstaff called out, waving a hand so that some blobs of light appeared above her, a beacon for everyone to see where she was. “Listen up!” 

Standing next to her, Miss Jones pulled out a slip of paper, rolling her eyes lightly at the contents before clearing her throat and beginning to read. “Welcome, students of all ages, classes and backgrounds, to the eighty-seventh annual... “ She sighed, before continuing, “Aguefort Adventuring Academy Presents: The Scandalously Charming Springtime Surprise-Packed Palooza of Pastime Paradise: The Version Where It’s Not As Easy To Die 3.0.” 

A cheer came up from the students, and Miss Jones continued. “In line with school tradition of always being prepared for that which you cannot prepare for, the theme for this years Aguefort Adventuring- it’s just the title again okay- this year’s _Event,_ has been designed by your illustrious principal and kept secret from everyone else. Each event is designed to test something different in yourselves, something that you may not receive in your regular education at Aguefort.”

Everyone was quiet, waiting to find out what it would be. Miss Jones seemed to read ahead a little, her eyebrows raising before she kept going. “This year, your event will be… a scavenger hunt.”

Huh. That didn’t seem too hard. Sam glanced around at her fellow classmates, seeing a lot of them nodding, some that had been to Bastion City before high-fiving for their perceived natural advantage. Penny was already rubbing her hands in glee, undoubtedly planning to mercilessly interrogate Sam for her insider knowledge of the city.

“Hold on, students.” Professor Runstaff said.

“There’s more.” Miss Jones added. “Each team will receive a list of unique items to procure, to be brought back to your current meeting spot by four o clock this afternoon, after which the buses will head home and the rest of you will be left to find your own ways back to Elmville.” 

“Ignore that part, we will not depart without every student.” Professor Runstaff interjected, seeming slightly exasperated.

“The winning group, that is, the team that returns to their meeting spot with all items quickest, will receive a special, mysterious prize to be revealed upon declaration of the winners. Extra points can potentially be earned for creativity, originality, and drama. There is one final thing. In order to test and strengthen your ability to work in a team that you are not entirely familiar with… your teams will be determined not by adventuring party or level, but a randomiser spell of my own creation that will most likely _not_ blow anyone up and will take effect after the final word of this letter has been read. Aguefort out.” 

Before anyone had a chance to process that final part, there was a loud _pop,_ and Sam felt the uncomfortable and undeniable sensation of being suddenly transported, the world around her exploding into stars for barely a moment before she was dropped somewhere else entirely. 

  
  


* * *

Penny cracked open her eyes, having instinctively closed them after feeling the spell begin to take effect. She found herself in an unfamiliar street, not even in the courtyard she had been in moments before. 

Around her, she could see some people staring at her in shock after her sudden appearance, shaking their heads before either moving on with their day or hurrying away as quickly as they could. But more importantly, she realised there was something in her hands.

Looking down, she found a piece of folded paper, the outside blank except for the crest of Aguefort Academy.

“Oh my gosh!” Looking up, Penny realised she hadn’t been transported alone. The first person she saw was Sam, the one who had spoken, looking up and around with wide eyes. “We got completely teleported!” 

“Ooooh, thank goodness you guys are here.” Antiope was there too, looking very relieved. Just behind her, Ayda was standing, seeming flustered and looking around. 

“Well, this throws _my_ plans out the window.” Penny looked to her left to see Adaine, a little bewildered but shaking her head lightly. “Um… hello, new teammates?” 

“Oh my gosh, we got split almost in half.” Penny looked around again to see Zelda, the final person Penny recognised in sight. A team of six. 

“What’s going on here?” Sam asked, putting her hands on her hips. “What’s the idea of splitting us up?”

“To make us work with an unfamiliar team composition, I guess,” Adaine said, looking at all of them nervously. “Or… kind of unfamiliar.”

“We must’ve gotten lucky with so many of us in one team then,” Zelda said, before looking at Adaine and Ayda. “Kinda.”

“This is… not what I had expected when I agreed to come on this excursion,” Ayda said. 

“I think it’ll be fun!” Penny said, gasping before grinning deviously. “We can compete to beat the others!” 

“Where _are_ the others?” Zelda asked, prompting most of them to pull out their crystals, checking all the group chats.

Many of them were a flurry of activity, students all checking in with each other, figuring out group compositions, and trying to track down missing party members.

“Hey, Ostentatia, Danielle and Katja are all together too!” Sam announced, always the quickest with catching on to school gossip among them. Her eyes widened. “With Aelwyn!”

“Aelwyn’s with them?” Adaine gaped. “She’s not even a student!” 

“The spell must’ve figured she wasn’t a teacher and decided that was close enough,” Penny said, scrolling through her own crystal. It would’ve been fun to do the Event with all of the Maidens, but having a few was just as good. Besides, this was a competition now, and Penny played to win. 

“Ooooh, she’s gonna be so annoyed with me.” Adaine winced.

“Why’d she come?” Antiope asked. 

“Ehhhh, we’re trying to get her Solecian citizenship and because of all the crimes, they want her to do some community service as proof that she won’t do it again. Which doesn’t make sense to me, but, oh well. So I convinced her that chaperoning a school trip would be easy.” Adaine said, looking warily down at her own crystal.

“You really picked the worst school trip for her to chaperone,” Penny said, smiling sympathetically. “This is the Annual Event.”

“Well, we missed ours last year.” Adaine sighed. “Since we were in prison and everything. No one told us what it would be like.” 

“She _is_ with Fig.” Ayda spoke up. “And Kristen.”

“Oh. Well, that should be alright then. Probably.” Adaine said. “All the boys are split up in different groups.”

“We _really_ got lucky, then,” Antiope said, putting her crystal away and instead looking at the piece of paper Penny was holding. “Is that the list of items we’re supposed to get?” 

“Looks like it.” Penny held it up proudly. “We’re gonna beat all the other teams _so_ bad.”

“Yeah, Fabian’s declared war on every single other group in the city, and three other groups have already made counter-declarations,” Adaine said dryly. “If it _wasn’t_ supposed to be a competition, that’s ruined.”

“May the gods help Bastion City,” Sam said solemnly, pressing one finger to her lips before pointing up to the sky. 

“What’s the list say?” Zelda asked, coming over to look over Penny’s shoulder.

“Let’s see…” Penny opened the paper, reading aloud as the others gathered around. “Something sharp, a new suit- there’s even specific measurements, a fire extinguisher, an octopus lamp, a spatula, a grandfather clock-”

“What? This sounds like nonsense!” Sam’s hand darted in to snatch the paper, narrowing her eyes and reading it closely. “...assorted electrical cords? Pigeons? A vase?”

“Does he mean… actual pigeons?” Zelda asked. “Like… _alive_ pigeons?”

There was a short silence as they all realised that with Aguefort, they could never be certain. The list was passed around between them all, eventually coming back to Penny, who stared at it for a long moment.

“Okay, I’m like 80% sure this is just so Professor Aguefort can refurnish his house.” She finally said. 

“He _did_ have to sell a lot of stuff to get out of bankruptcy.” Antiope mused. 

“How are we supposed to get it all?” Adaine asked. “Were we given a bag of holding? Money?” 

Penny shook her head, and everyone checked their pockets and the ground around them just in case they’d missed something. Nope. Besides the piece of paper, the only resources they had were whatever they had been carrying with them.

Which, considering they were a group of adventurers who had already been through far more traumatic situations than regular teens, was still quite prepared. But Penny wasn’t sure her collection of hidden daggers would be very useful in finding a box full of rocks or rainbow suspenders. 

“This must be part of the challenge.” Ayda mused, her brow furrowed thoughtfully. “We should get started immediately.”

“We can organise all this stuff by how hard it will be to get. Sorry you couldn’t be with Fig, Ayda.” Adaine murmured, though she was looking down the list again, making notes on her crystal. 

“I spend lots of time with Fig, and I think it will be an exciting challenge to compete against her and many other teenagers. Besides, spending time with my best friend is just as pleasant.” Ayda nodded, eliciting a smile from Adaine, before she looked at the rest of them, her voice serious. “We shall be the strongest team by far.” 

“We can probably find a lot of stuff in thrift stores or antique shops or something,” Penny said, beginning to feel the crumbs of the excitement they’d felt this morning build up again.

“Excellent, you three can put in all the effort, text me when you’ve found everything and you’re heading back to the courtyard, _I’m_ going to go enjoy a day in the city,” Sam said, waving loosely and spinning on her heels to begin to turn away, only to be immediately intercepted by Antiope.

“No escape, Sam!” Antiope beamed, pushing her towards the circle that Penny, Ayda, and Adaine had formed over the list, grabbing Zelda by the arm as she did. “We’re gonna be the best scavenger hunt team ever!” 

* * *

“Okay, where are we gonna find a painting that _moves?”_ Kristen stabbed a finger at her team’s list of scavenger hunt items. 

“I vote we just ignore that one until we have all the easy stuff,” Ostentatia said, and Kristen looked back at the list.

“A piano? A chair that is _specifically_ avocado green? A cat?” She groaned. Why was Aguefort so _weird_ sometimes? 

“Getting a cat will be easy!” Danielle bounced up next to Kristen, Toast plodding alongside her and getting distracted every three seconds before Katja would poke him along again with a light tap from her foot. “I have a really good way with animals.” 

“So are we gonna steal someone's cat or pick up a stray orrrrrr-” 

“Who says it has to be a real cat?” Katja said, bringing up the rear of the group to, in her words, ‘make sure no one runs off, looking at you Aelwyn and also Danielle and also Ostentatia and probably Kristen and Fig as well’. “We can just find a cat statue or something.” 

“Well whatever we’re getting first, we need to hurry up and decide. Riz’s team has _already_ found a purple handbag and they’re bragging about it.” Fig turned her crystal around to show everybody a picture of a smug teenager holding a handbag that looked like it had been fished out of a garbage can, their teammates all pointing at it and grinning obnoxiously at the camera. 

“Look, we’ll go for the pile of sticks first, that’ll be easy as,” Katja said. “Let’s find a park, keep an eye out for anything else as we go, and get this done. And _yes,_ Aelwyn, you’re coming too.”

“This is extremely inconvenient.” Aelwyn had been skeptical of this entire trip from the start, but now Kristen was pretty sure she’d mentally checked out of the day entirely since everyone had been split into teams, just trying to get through it so she could go home and mark off the hours of community service.

“C’moooon, Aelwyn, it would be fun to beat Adaine in the competition, wouldn’t it?” Kristen nudged Aelwyn in the ribs.

“I’ll have you know I’m actually working very hard on _not_ turning everything between my sister and I into a competition.”

“This is _actually_ a competition though,” Fig said, poking Aelwyn’s other side, both of them grinning. “Your spells could be sooooo helpful, and then we could finish early and beat everyone else and go home.” 

“Or you could ditch us now and leave forever, works the same for me.” Ostentatia piped up just as cheerfully as the rest of them, and Aelwyn sighed. 

“ _Technically,_ I signed up for this as a supervisor. All I have to do is make sure you don’t get yourself killed.” She folded her arms. 

“Too bad!” Katja announced, and Kristen looked over her shoulder to see her smiling a little deviously. “You’re part of this team now, and I’m _not_ going to let us be at a disadvantage. We’re winning this thing.” 

Kristen, Fig, Danielle, and Ostentatia all cheered while Aelwyn groaned dramatically, though allowing herself to be dragged along by Kristen as they all raced towards the closest park to pick up a pile of sticks. How many sticks? They had no idea. Just a pile. 

Kristen could not be more excited about this. She’d never been to Bastion City except for their brief visit during Spring Break (which hardly counted) and since she’d missed her freshman Annual Event, she’d been looking forward to this one. Even all the students getting mixed up onto different teams only made her _more_ excited because the Seven Maidens were awesome!

Danielle could turn into animals! Kind of like Tracker but also not really at all, and Ostentatia was a cleric (albeit an entirely different kind to Kristen) and Katja had always been impressive. Plus she had Fig, who was just fun to hang out with in general.

And then there was Aelwyn, who, despite her unenthusiasm with most things, could be very fun when she wanted to be. So yeah, this was definitely a recipe for something beautiful. Hopefully.

Two hours or so of searching later had yet to dissuade Kristen of this opinion. 

“Alright lady, what do you want in exchange for these socks?” Ostentatia — currently wearing a snazzy checker-print hat that they’d found half an hour ago — slammed a pair of fuzzy socks down on the counter of the tiny thrift store they’d located. 

The woman stared at them blankly, Ostentatia with one hand on the counter, Kristen and Fig grinning over her shoulder while Katja wrangled an easily distracted Danielle and Aewlyn sat on an old couch texting rather than doing anything to help. 

“Three silver.” The woman finally said. 

Kristen blinked, and from the brief moment of silence between the others, they’d all seemingly forgotten that sometimes… sometimes they could get stuff _without_ having to go through massive pain or struggle.

“Oh. Uh, how much money do you guys have?” Ostentatia said, almost seeming a little disappointed at how easy it was.

“I can throw in a silver.” Kristen began digging in her pockets while Fig pulled out her own purse. Some coins jangled onto the counter, and the woman shoved the socks back in their direction. 

Kristen grabbed them, holding them aloft like a great trophy. “SUCCESS!”

“YEAH!” Ostentatia and Fig cheered in response, the three of them rushing to Katja for approval. With Danielle, Kristen, and Fig all being sophomores, Ostentatia a freshman (all the Maidens had had to be held back a year thanks to missing most or all of the previous one, something which Ostentatia had already griped about twice) and Aelwyn unenthused, junior Katja had declared herself the leader, which was probably wise. 

“Behold!” Kristen announced once they found Katja and Danielle in the back of the store. “One pair of fuzzy socks!” 

“Awesome. That’s four out of fifteen.” Katja pulled out the list, checking off one of the items with a flourish. “Next up, I think we can find a bunch of tupperware somewhere, right?” 

“Totally, let’s get going!” Ostentatia said, the bangles and bracelets on her wrists jangling as she went to pull her two party members along. Ostentatia was fun, even if Kristen had only been able to see her a few times in her cleric classes before she’d gotten poisoned and then kidnapped and then Kristen had moved on to be a sophomore while Ostentatia had had to repeat. But she was fun, and, as Kristen was discovering, very energetic and competitive. 

“Let’s _gooooo_ Abernant!” Ostentatia called as they passed the chair where Aelwyn had been sitting. 

“Oh goody.” Aelwyn deadpanned, reluctantly getting to her feet and following the group as they exited the thrift store, back to prowling the streets of Bastion City. 

Fig, Kristen, and Ostentatia ran ahead, Toast running alongside them with his tongue hanging out. Even though he was Danielle’s pet (Danielle called him her familiar, but according to Katja he was literally just a pet, with nothing magic about him) he seemed to enjoy hanging out with all of them, jumping up onto Ostentatia’s back and happily accepting scratches from Kristen and Fig. 

“I think we can find the cuckoo clock next,” Kristen said, grinning as the three of them slowed down a little, Katja calling out for them not to get too far ahead.

“But it has to be able to play Careless Whisper.” Ostentatia pointed out. 

Fig hummed to herself, before her face lit up, and she shouted out over her shoulder. “Hey, Aelwyn! If I play a song are you able to record it and enchant a cuckoo clock to sing it?” 

Kristen paused in her walking to look behind her, where Aelwyn was squinting at Fig before sighing dramatically.

“ _Yeeeeaah,_ I guess so.” 

“Boom! Done deal.” Fig puffed her chest out. “Aguefort’s even gonna get a unique cover.” 

“Awesome.” Kristen grinned. “We’re _so_ gonna win this, the others won’t even know what hit them!” 

“Penny’s gonna lose her mind.” Ostentatia laughed. “She can be _soooo_ competitive.” 

“It’s gonna be great.” Fig rubbed her hands together. “I think the six of us make an awesome team. Even if we keep losing Danielle and Aelwyn. And if we scared that old lady in the park.”

“And nearly set off that alarm in the museum,” Kristen added. “Old paintings don’t _really_ need frames, right?” 

“Ah, they’ll just find another one.” Ostentatia scoffed, waving her hand, before doing a double-take. “Hey! A furniture store!” 

“Ooh, we can look for that chair _and_ get some of those throw pillows!” Kristen grinned. 

“We’re the best team ever!”

They didn’t bother wasting any time waiting for the others to catch up before they crossed the street to the furniture store, opening the door _perhaps_ a little too dramatically (okay, Fig declared her intention to try kicking it open like someone in a movie and Ostentatia and Kristen had nearly run into each other trying to beat her to it, resulting in all three of them falling through when it turned out to open inwards as well as outwards)

They got a good few minutes of terrorizing the staff before Katja arrived with the others, organising a more methodical search through the store with everyone split off into different sections to look for items on the list.

Kristen found herself near the front of the store, digging through bins of odds and ends in search of appropriate throw pillows. When they first arrived in the store, they were the only customers as far as she could tell, though soon after they arrived another collection of people showed up, some occupying the staff members while others began spreading out through the store. 

At first, Kristen ignored them, finally locating a suitable pillow and triumphantly pulling it out of the bin, looking around for Danielle, the only one with a backpack large enough to carry most of the items they were supposed to get. 

Danielle had been assigned to the back of the store, inspecting every single chair they could find with even a hint of green on it along with Ostentatia.

“One gen-u-ine throw pillow, located,” Kristen announced proudly. “It’s even got little ducks sewn onto it, that’s gotta be good for extra points, right?” 

“Kristen, get over here and look at this chair. Does this part look avocado green enough for you?” Ostentatia waved her over, holding her crystal up with a page open on the colour avocado green, and pointing at a plush green-striped chair. 

“I just don’t think it’s close enough.” Danielle was saying, the top of Toast’s head poking happily out of her backpack. “It’s more of a moss shade.” 

“Is Aguefort really gonna stand there and check to see if it’s the _exact_ perfect shade?” Ostentatia rolled her eyes, jabbing a thumb at the chair.

The three of them stood there in silence for a moment, all coming to the same conclusion. 

“Gods, he would, wouldn’t he.” Ostentatia groaned. 

“I think it looks pretty close.” Kristen piped up, before movement behind Danielle and Ostentatia caught her eye. 

Some of the other customers that had arrived after them had made their way to the back of the store. Most of them, in fact. And they were looking at them a little strangely.

Kristen glanced towards the front of the store, suddenly realising she hadn’t seen any of the staff members in a while. She could hear Katja and Fig hotly debating something somewhere else, and she’d passed by Aelwyn laying out on a display bed she probably wasn’t supposed to be laying on a few minutes ago, waiting for them to finish. 

Something… something was going on here.

“Uh, guys-” Kristen opened her mouth, but before she could say something, one of the ‘customers’ jumped forward. “-Danielle!”

Too quickly for any of them to react, the person leaping forward was up behind Danielle, pressing a cloth to her face. Ostentatia and Kristen both shrieked in alarm as the other strangers in the store began running towards them, the others calling out in confusion from wherever they were in the store. 

Danielle struggled and Kristen could see her form begin to shift even as she pulled out her staff into a ready position, whipping around to slam a frantic Guiding Bolt into a man running up behind her, armed with his own cloth and obviously surprised to see her fighting back. 

“What the-” Someone called out as Danielle shifted into a ferret or weasel or something, slipping easily out of the man’s grip and running up his arm to bite at his face, everything she was carrying absorbing into her form except for Toast, who dropped to the ground and promptly began running circles around everyone’s feet, yipping manically. 

“What’s going on?!” Kristen saw Katja and Fig rounding a corner, weapon or guitar already pulled out and ready to go, and saw a flash of Aelwyn’s head poking up from behind something a fair ways away, her eyes wide. 

“Shit- get them!” Someone grabbed onto Ostentatia’s arm, rewarded with an elbow to the stomach and a burning hand shoving into his wrist. 

The attackers were obviously unprepared for resistance, but adapted quickly, some pulling out weapons and others just launching themselves at them, perhaps trying to overwhelm them through sheer numbers. 

Kristen tossed a Sacred Flame at one of them, hearing a bass line from Fig’s guitar begin to filter in through the shouting, and a loud thud as Katja jumped onto the back of someone else. 

Then Aelwyn suddenly arrived, a ghostly necrotic hand shooting out and slamming into one of the other attackers, the person shuddering and nearly dropping the rag and dagger he was holding. 

For a few moments, Kristen was confident that they’d be able to handle them. They’d handled far worse, even if their enemies had managed to surprise them. Katja and Fig had joined the battle in earnest, Aelwyn had kicked herself into gear even if she was hanging back as wizards were wont to do, and Danielle was proving a surprisingly fearsome ferret. 

Then everything promptly went terrible extremely quickly. 

First, someone managed to get up behind her, and before Kristen knew it there was a strong, almost iron-grip arm pinned across her chest, and a horribly chemical-smelling rag pressed over her mouth or nose. She sputtered, unable to stop herself from breathing in great gulps of it in her surprise, and after only a few moments felt her head begin to spin.

Someone else was tackling Katja, though she was giving as good as she got, and Kristen could vaguely hear a collection of insistent chirps from Ferret Danielle. Fig was running towards them, strumming a chord and making glasses and mirrors around them shatter into pieces, and Ostentatia was still furiously fighting back, while Aelwyn was loudly complaining about her inability to use any of her good spells in such an enclosed environment with friends mixed in so tightly with foes. 

“Ooooh- dear-” Kristen’s legs were buckling beneath her, and distantly, she saw one of the attackers, clearly upset with how this whole adventure was going (join the club, buddy), pulling out a shimmering rock, calling out something to his compatriots before throwing it onto the ground, in the centre of the entire mess where most of the attackers, Kristen, Danielle, Ostentatia and Fig were fighting, with Katja and Aelwyn on the outskirts. 

The floor beneath Kristen vanished.

For a moment, she was weightless.

Then she fell through.

* * *

“Yo, Fig, you up?” 

Fig felt the tip of someone’s shoes poke into her leg, and she cracked her eyes open, blinking away the grogginess and scrunching her nose at the lingering smell of chemicals in the air. It took her a moment to realise that she was lying on the ground, and, more concerningly, her hands were tied behind her back.

“Uh… what’s going on?” She asked, looking around the room. 

Kristen, the one who had poked her with her foot, was sitting up and looking at her, while Danielle was humming something to herself, and Katja was standing up, looking out the door. Ostentatia was sitting up as well, half-turned away from them with a magical ring glowing brightly, giving them some light. Aelwyn was lying on her back on the ground, somehow even more exhausted and irritated than she had been before. All of them had their arms behind their backs as well.

“We totally lost,” Kristen said, shrugging.

“Turns out chloroform is powerful stuff.” Aelwyn deadpanned, still seeming slightly drowsy. 

“And they took all our weapons, focuses, anything magical they could find,” Katja said, turning towards them and sitting on the ground with a huff. 

“What about all our scavenger hunt stuff?” Fig looked around, trying to figure out what had been taken from her. Her guitar was the most obvious, which was a massive pain. But her backpack was gone too.

“All gone,” Kristen said, frowning. “They even took the hat!”

“The hat? Really? We worked so hard for that one!” Fig groaned. 

“I sent Toast to find help,” Danielle said. “He’s very reliable.”

Twenty minutes away from where Fig and the others were, Toast looked up from the hot dog he had stolen from a vendor’s cart, one ear twitching. 

“Still, the kidnappers _did_ imply that we probably wouldn’t be getting out of here alive, so I’m not a fan of waiting around for Toast to bring back help,” Katja said. 

“Of _course_ we’re not waiting around! Now that everyone’s awake we can get going!” Ostentatia said, wriggling to her feet with her hands still tied up.

“Sure, we can just break out of this room, track down all of our weapons, focuses, and magical items, assuming they’re even still nearby, and beat up an unclear number of enemies that have already gotten the drop on us once. No sweat.” Aelwyn said, frowning. 

“Yeah, duh,” Kristen said. 

“Ugh, we’re gonna be _so_ behind on the scavenger hunt,” Fig said, furrowing her brow.

“We don’t even have a way to let anyone know we’ve run into trouble,” Katja said, before glancing towards Danielle. “Except for Toast.” 

“Oh, we don’t need to worry about that!” Fig said. “Hang on.”

Behind her back, Fig wriggled her fingers in a familiar pattern, summoning a very shaky Mage Hand. But it was enough to do the job, and after a couple of minutes, the tight duct tape around her wrists was pulled away, all of the others blinking at her, before looking to Aelwyn.

“Were _you_ able to do that?” Ostentatia asked.

Aelwyn just shrugged. “Sorry, I’ve been busy regretting thinking that spending time with my sister and her friends would ever lead to a normal day.” 

Ignoring that, Fig unclipped her earring from her ear, thankfully left alone by their kidnappers. Ayda’s feather in hand, she closed her eyes and said her girlfriend’s name.

Across the city, Ayda paused mid-air, the pigeons that she’d been chasing zooming to safety as quickly as they could. 

Fig. Something was wrong. 

Ayda looked down at the ground, where the rest of her team members were also doing their best to trap, catch, chase or coax as many pigeons as they could get their hands on, with their level of success ranging from a frozen Zelda being absolutely covered in birds to Sam frantically throwing pieces of bread as far away from herself as she could, shrieking if they got too close. 

Flying down to the ground, Ayda began casting the Sending spell, picturing her girlfriend in her mind. 

“I sensed you summoning me, are you in danger?” She paused, before continuing. “I hope your scavenger hunt is going well, my group will destroy yours, I love you.” 

After a moment, she heard Fig’s voice in her head. _“Awww, babe, I love you too. You know, we were doing pretty well, but then we got kidnapped and now we’re stuck in a room-”_

Ayda blinked, before immediately recasting the spell. “Did they hurt you? Do you know where you are? I will hunt them down and make them regret ever touching you. I miss you.” 

_“I miss you too, we’re fine, they just drugged us a bit, Aelwyn is being a drag, not sure where we are but maybe underground?”_

Ayda let the spell fade, not recasting it again. 

“What’s up Ayda?” Penny appeared from somewhere nearby, notable pigeon-less but with feathers in her hair. “Did you catch one?”

“Fig and the others have been kidnapped,” Ayda said solemnly, beginning to walk towards the others. “We must rescue them.”

Penny’s mouth dropped open a little, before she sighed, cupping her hands around her mouth and calling out. “GUYS! THE OTHERS GOT KIDNAPPED AGAIN!”

There was a very loud groan from everyone else. 

* * *

“Ayda knows what’s up,” Fig reported back happily, after a few moments of waiting to see if she was going to using another Sending spell. “She’ll probably scry and see where we are.”

“Great idea. Except a scry spell can’t go much further than the scried person’s immediate surroundings.” Aelwyn piped up, finally dragging herself up to a sitting position, patting down her hair into something neat again after unwrapping the duct tape around her wrists with her own Mage Hand. “Do you see a sign or any identifiable landmarks anywhere nearby?” 

Fig looked around, admitting she had a point. There were no windows anywhere in the room, which seemed to be partially carved from rock and covered in years of old graffiti, rusted and faded signs with number and letter combinations that seemed entirely random. If none of them had any idea where in the city they were, chances are the others would be just as lost. 

“Who are these guys to begin with?” Kristen asked. “Are they after us?”

“Well, does anyone here have a reason for random people to be after them?” Katja asked, addressing them all. 

Everyone quickly said no, or shook their heads, or stared blankly at a wall for a moment before very uncertainly saying ‘ _probably_ not’, which left them with not many other ideas. 

“Ugh-” Ostentatia was pacing around the room by now. “This is ridiculous! Let’s just bust out, find all our stuff, and get going. The others could take _hours_ to find us, and in the meantime, we’re wasting valuable scavenger hunt opportunities.” 

“Maybe there’s some of the other stuff on the list down here.” Kristen mused. “Like more sticks.”

“They _did_ leave the list with us,” Katja said, waving the piece of paper. By now Fig had freed everyone’s wrists, most of them either dumping the duct tape on the ground or tucking it into a pocket.

“Of course you’re all still concerned about the scavenger hunt.” Aelwyn sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. 

“I’m down to break out.” Fig piped up, curling her hands into fists. “Prison breaks are always fun.”

Nearly everyone present grimaced, and Fig shrugged. “ _I’ve_ had fun in all of my prison breaks.”

They debated the best way to break out and what they would do if there turned out to be a dozen bad guys on the other side of the door, before Aelwyn perked up, her eyes narrowing. “Everyone shut up, I hear footsteps.”

That was just enough warning for all of them to look at the door before simultaneously shoving their freed hands behind their backs and Ostentatia to douse the light coming from her magical ring just as it opened up, a few of the men that Fig recognised as having attacked them walking in, some holding torches.

“Finally, we can get down to business.” One of them — a short and sour-looking man that Fig decided to call Meathead in lieu of an actual name — sighed, looking at Danielle and holding up her phone. “Now, you’re going to call your father and get him to-”

“Which one?” Danielle interrupted, the picture of innocence sitting on the floor. None of the men seemed to have noticed that they’d removed the duct tape around their wrists, suitably distracted by Danielle. Fig was sitting up against a wall and didn’t feel confident in her ability to try something without being immediately noticed, but she could see Katja and Ostentatia both slowly shuffling along another wall, positioning themselves behind some of the other men that walked inside.

“Which- what are you talking about?” Meathead scoffed. “Your father!”

Danielle frowned, and Fig exchanged a confused glance with Aelwyn, who had narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, which one? Cause they work in different places so if you want one in particular I gotta know.”

“You only have one father!” 

“No, I don’t!”

“Woah, woah, wait-” Fig said, chuckling and drawing the attention of most of their kidnappers. “Who’s this guy you want her to call? Who do you even think she is?” 

“Alexandrina van Thanda! Daughter of the CEO of one of the biggest tech companies in Solace! Blonde, half-elf, has a pet cat she carries around everywhere!” Meathead gestured in obvious frustration, and for a moment Fig and all the other teens paused.

“Oh my god,” Aelwyn whispered in disbelief.

“Yeah, uh, my name’s Danielle,” Danielle said, and for a moment the kidnappers stared at her, then at the others.

“Imagine mistaking a fox for a cat.” Kristen snorted back a laugh.

“Get them!” Katja shouted, before pouncing on the back of the biggest person in there. Ostentatia jumped on someone else at the same time, and all of the others promptly leaped into action, bringing their hands out from behind their backs and grabbing whatever rocks or loose pipes laid on the ground as a weapon or, failing that, just punching and kicking with all they had. 

The first thing Fig did was make her hand glow in a flashy but ultimately harmless fire, slashing out at the closest attacker to her and, when he instinctively flinched away, kicked him in the crotch as hard as she could. 

He dropped like a sack of potatoes, and Fig stomped on his back for good measure as she fled, lurching for the open door and racing into the hall. As she passed, she saw Ostentatia get knocked on the shoulder pretty good by a torch, and Aelwyn tossing up a shield to block another torch smashing into her skull. 

Danielle was the next to make it out of the room, her long dirty-blonde and pink-streaked hair pulled loose from the braided bun it had been in and quickly untangling. Aelwyn was next, a shield still flickering around her and clutching a mangled pipe tightly with both hands.

“Let’s get moving!” Katja bounded out the door, dragging a stumbling Kristen behind her, with Ostentatia bringing up the rear, kicking someone Fig couldn’t see backward before slamming the door shut behind them.

Fig didn’t need to be told twice. There were some flickering emergency lights in the hallway they found themselves in, which was dank and carved out of the rock, with puddles of murky water on the ground.

“Ugh, are we in like, the _sewers?”_ Ostentatia complained as they ran, her ring once again lighting up the room around them better than the overhead lights could. 

“Looks more like old tunnels of some kind to me,” Aelwyn said.

“Wherever we are, we need to find all our stuff, beat up any other kidnappers, not die, and hopefully meet up with the others,” Katja said.

“And finish the scavenger hunt!” Fig piped up cheerfully.

“Well, _duh.”_

* * *

“Alright, exactly how kidnapped are we talking here?” Ayda stood on the ground, tapping the tips of her fingers together anxiously while the rest of her scavenger hunt group stood around her.

Antiope was the one who had spoken, a thoughtful look on her face and her arms folded across her chest. 

“A relatively regular kidnapping, as far as I could tell. Fig was not able to give me many details, but she said they were underground, and they were drugged.” Ayda explained quickly. “I can scry on her, and try to discover more.” 

Without waiting for the others to approve, she began pulling out the materials she’d need to scry, setting it up while only half-listening to the discussion the others began having around her.

“Are we _sure_ they got kidnapped, and it’s not just a trick?” Sam asked. “Because I’m not falling for that one. Again.”

“Technically Ostentatia pretended she’d fallen off a cliff that time,” Antiope said absently, and Sam quickly shushed her. 

“None of them are answering their phones,” Zelda said nervously.

“The scavenger hunt, though.” Penny sighed. 

“We could always leave it to the police,” Adaine said dryly, and there was a very long pause. After an almost obnoxious amount of time, Ayda looked up to see what was going on, only to see all five of the other girls, including Adaine, scrunching up their faces or otherwise grimacing in clear disgust.

“Alright, so obviously we’re not going to the police, because they’re trash at everything,” Antiope said. “We just need to figure out where our friends are, go get them, beat up anyone in our way, and also win the scavenger hunt at the same time, easy.” 

Ayda heard the beginnings of some of the others speaking up with concerns or suggestions, but she had stopped listening, holding the small crystal ball she used for scrying in her hands and focusing intently. 

She closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of her magic bubble from behind her eyes and down into her hands, and when everyone else’s voices suddenly cut off, she opened them, no longer in the courtyard where her team had been chasing pigeons.

Fig was the first thing she saw, and immediately Ayda looked for any noticeable injuries, of which there were thankfully none besides some bruises and scratches. The rest of Fig’s team was gathered around in a loose clump, all six of them running through a dark, dank tunnel of some kind, Ayda’s spell following them as Fig moved.

Okay, okay, she had exactly ten minutes maximum before the spell ended, and a lot of information she needed to uncover. First things first, the general health of everyone.

Fig looked alright, as she had already ascertained, and most of the others seemed fairly healthy. Ostentatia was holding one of her arms a little awkwardly, and everyone was a bit dirty and frazzled, but she didn’t spot any injuries that might need worrying about, which made sense when Ayda considered that Kristen, Ostentatia, Danielle, and Fig all had healing spells. 

Although… Ayda realised that Kristen wasn’t holding the question-mark shaped staff that she usually did. And Fig didn’t have her guitar. And she was _certain_ that Danielle had had a staff as well. 

None of them had weapons either. Well, Aelwyn and Katja were both holding pipes, and Kristen had a particularly big rock, but they weren’t proper weapons. 

That wasn’t very good. 

“Ugh, this place is a maze!” Kristen complained. 

“Shh!” Katja hushed, running in the front of the group and coming to a quick stop in front of the door, the other girls all skidding to a halt before they could run into each other. 

“I think it’s kinda fun,” Fig said with a loose smile, and that was comforting. “Running through a bunch of underground tunnels.”

“Yes, it would great if we were being chased by people who might kill us while I can hardly do any of my spells.” Aelwyn had folded her arms, and while none of them seemed particularly worried, she was the most obviously irritated by this entire situation. 

“Well next time you go on an Aguefort trip, you can prepare more that don’t require components or a focus,” Ostentatia said with a shrug. “A whole bunch of my favourites are totally out too. It’s like, who am I without Spirit Guardians?” 

“Oh my gods, I can’t do Spirit Guardians right now!” Kristen gasped. “This sucks!” 

“I know!” 

“I can still do Blight, so that’s pretty cool.” Danielle chimed in helpfully.

Katja, meanwhile, had been attempting to open the door they had stopped at, finally kicking it down with a flourish and looking inside, before scoffing. “Nothing but old signs. C’mon, girls.”

They all began moving away, and as Fig walked past the now open door, Ayda’s scrying sensor followed her, and she got a look inside the room. There were stacks of old signs inside, looking as if they’d been ripped from the walls themselves with chunks of stone still attached. Most were small or rusted and broken enough that Ayda couldn’t make out what they said, but one was still legible in the brief moments she had to look at them. 

Grantlies Station. 

Then the glimpse was gone, and Ayda kept moving. She followed the group a short while longer, but it was clear they didn’t know where they were going. So she pulled herself from the spell, closing her eyes and opening them again to find herself back at the courtyard. 

Zelda and Adaine were both sitting on the ground next to her, chatting amicably about something, cutting off when they noticed Ayda shaking her head to rid herself of the final dredges of the spell. After a few moments, Ayda located the rest of their group, seeing Penny and Antiope screaming, still trying to wrangle a pigeon with _extremely_ limited success while Sam filmed them from a safe distance, openly laughing.

Ayda watched them for a moment, before looking at Zelda and Adaine. “Do they know you already have one?”

Zelda looked down at the pigeon sitting happily in her lap like it had been there its whole life and smiled awkwardly. “I think they’re having fun.” 

“We named him Eli,” Adaine said, pointing to the pigeon. “So what did you see?”

“Well,” Ayda shifted so that she was sitting cross-legged, fluffing up her wings a little as she got settled before continuing. “Everyone seems to be in good health, and they were currently free. But they don’t have any of their weapons or focuses, and seem to be in an underground series of tunnels, with no clear path of exit.” 

Zelda and Adaine exchanged some looks, before calling over the others.

“Sam, do you know about any underground tunnels in the city?” Zelda asked as the trio sat down, feathers stuck in their hair.

Sam looked up from where she’d been giggling at a video on her crystal. “Hmm? Oh, um… I mean, there’s the subway, I guess.”

“They can’t just be in the subway, can they? Way too many people.” Antiope frowned.

“It looked extremely dilapidated and old. I saw a sign on the ground that read ‘Grantlies Station’.” Ayda added, and Sam blinked.

“Oh, I know Grantlies, it’s near the bottom of the city, but they don’t have a station. They’re like, right near the end of the closest line. But maybe…” She trailed off, before tapping something into her crystal. “Ah! They _used_ to have a station, but it got closed down like three decades ago! There’s a whole bunch of old tunnels down there leading all over the city!”

“That must be where they are!” Zelda exclaimed. 

“If they’re running around through the tunnels they could end up anywhere, though.” Adaine pointed out.

“We should head over to Grantlies immediately,” Ayda said solemnly. “I do not have Teleport prepared, but I am not afraid to cause property damage to get into these tunnels.”

“Yeah, that _probably_ won’t be necessary,” Sam said, casually lowering Ayda’s hands from where she’d raised them into fists. “We’re not super close to Grantlies, but we can just get on the subway to the closest station and find where they blocked the tunnels off. Easy.” 

“Then we should get going immediately! Public transport can be slow and untrustworthy.” Ayda stood up, remembering the singular time she had used the public bus system in Elmville, travelling with Fig and the rest of the Bad Kids to Basrar’s on a rare occasion where none of their parents or guardians were available to drive them. 

“Alright, lead the way, Sam.” Antiope got to her feet next, everyone else getting up and gathering their things in preparation to leave. 

“Maybe we’ll be able to find enough cool rocks down there to fill up the box,” Adaine added as they began following Sam in the direction of the closest subway station. “Since everyone is so picky about the ones up here.”

“You _know_ Aguefort isn’t going to accept just any old random rocks!” Penny complained, before doing a double-take. “Wait, Zelda, how long have you had that pigeon?”

Zelda grinned, now holding the pigeon in her hands. “About ten minutes. His name is Eli.” 

“And you just let Antiope and I get attacked?”

“You seemed to have it under control.” 

* * *

Ostentatia was not a fan of kidnapping. Not a fan at all. She was also not a fan of trudging through dark, dank tunnels with puddles everywhere while she was only wearing sandals, and she was _absolutely_ not a fan of her holy symbol, an ornate bracelet her parents had made for her as a birthday present, being stolen from her. 

She was lucky that their kidnappers hadn’t picked up on one of her many rings being magical, because it was now one of the only things lighting their way, the other being Fig’s Thaumaturgy. 

Ostentatia’s light was brighter, so she was up at the front of the group with Katja, leading the way through the maze of tunnels in search of all their missing stuff and then the exit. 

Of course, chances were, if they found their stuff, they’d find the bad guys too. Which was not super fun. 

But hey, they were probably going to end up fighting bad guys anyway, so they might as well do it on their own terms. Hence why, when Aelwyn overheard some noises that sounded vaguely like talking in the distance, they had decided to head _towards_ it. 

“Shhh-” Katja stuck an arm out in front of Ostentatia, stopping her from moving any further. “We’re getting close.” 

“Great, and we still don’t have a plan. Or any real weapons.” Aelwyn grumbled, continuing before anyone could protest. “A pipe doesn’t count.” 

“Have some faith, Abernant.” Ostentatia looked over her shoulder to the elf. Her feelings about Aelwyn had been… mixed (bad, they’d been very bad) for a long time, but hey, getting kidnapped brings people together. 

“These idiots mistook Danielle for some rich kid, they can’t be _that_ smart,” Katja said. “Now everyone shut up before we get overheard and let’s get moving.”

They began moving down the tunnels again, unconsciously pulling in closer to each other. As they got close and Ostentatia began to hear the sound of voices as well, she dimmed the light from her ring, slowly lowering them into near darkness. Fig dropped her thaumaturgy as well, and quietly Ostentatia took stock of the spells that she _could_ do without her holy symbol. 

So much of her fun stuff was totally out. Spirit Guardians, Fireball, Flame Strike, _everything_ fun. Not to mention that if anyone died they were completely out of luck. She _could_ still heal, so that was a plus, at least. But Kristen, Fig, and Danielle could all do that as well, so they should be fine on that end. 

As she tried to remember what other spells she’d prepared that day, they continued creeping down the tunnel, wielding whatever improvised weapon they’d been able to find, and Ostentatia realised that they were close enough she could make out what was actually being said. 

“Oh, we are so _fucked-”_ Someone was complaining very loudly, and Ostentatia glanced over her shoulder at the others, barely restraining a grin. 

“We lost a gang of teenagers! How did we do that?” 

“They beat us up!”

“And _how_ did they do that? Even _after_ we took all their stuff?” 

“We’re the best.” Ostentatia heard Kristen giggling behind her, exchanging high-fives with Fig and Danielle. 

“Well, they’re obviously not the stupid rich kids we thought they were!”

They continued tip-toeing closer, and Ostentatia could see a door ahead, half-open with light streaming out of it. 

“Hey, guys? I-”

“Look, look, we can still salvage this. They had some valuable stuff on them. Whoever they are, there’s got to be something to get from them. Same plan as before, it just might not be _as_ profitable as we thought.”

“No, guys, hold on-”

“What is it?” 

“That tiefling we got.”

“What about her? She’s somewhere in the tunnels like all the others.”

“No, no, look at her guitar.”

There was a long silence from inside, and Katja stopped, making the rest of them all stop as well. Ostentatia looked over to Fig at the back of the line, who’s eyes were narrowed before her face slowly fell.

“Ooooooh, dear.” Fig grimaced.

“Holy shit.” One of the voices came from inside the building. 

“Did we kidnap a _rockstar?”_

“That’s perfect! She’s gotta be loaded!”

“No, no, she’s the rockstar from _Elmville._ The one that killed a _god_ or something a few months ago! On that livestream!”

“Oh my god, we kidnapped a bunch of teenage god-killers.”

“A bunch of _rich_ teenage god-killers?”

“I really like her music though.” 

“Did they miss the part where I like… got rid of all my money?” Fig whispered, and Katja quickly shushed her. 

“Let’s just jump them now while they think we’re all rich badasses,” Ostentatia said, curling her hands into fists even though her arm still ached from where she’d been hit back in the room they’d woken up in. 

“Technically Katja is the only rich one here,” Danielle said, prompting another hissed shush from their unofficial leader. 

They’d just about reached the door, and so everyone finally quieted, as Katja inched ever closer, peering around the door as far as she dared while the kidnappers inside continued to argue about what they were supposed to do about a gang of possibly-rich-possibly-god-killer teenagers running around in their tunnels. 

She ducked back pretty quickly, shuffling everyone back to give a report. “I didn’t see any of our stuff but Fig’s guitar.” 

“Still better than nothing.” Ostentatia frowned. “Everything else must be close, right?”

“Yeah, but I counted twelve of them in there. And I’m like ninety percent sure at least four of them had guns.” 

“Well... I _do_ have Greater Invisibility, and I’m pretty sure I can still cast it.” Fig whispered. “So I could sneak in and grab my guitar…” 

“And then surprise them enough for the rest of us to launch a surprise attack?” Kristen asked, and Fig nodded. 

“Alright, sounds like an idea,” Katja said. “I’d say to pick a signal but we’ll probably be able to figure it out.”

Fig grinned and then winked at them before waving her hands and disappearing. Ostentatia strained to listen to her footsteps leading away from them, causing ripples in a puddle nearby, before disappearing completely as Fig went into the room. 

The rest of them stood in silence after creeping back towards the door, and Ostentatia practised the hand movements for some of the spells she could still do, preparing for an imminent battle while listening to the continued conversation of their kidnappers inside. 

“What if they kill us all, huh? They’re god-killers!”

“If they get out, they can lead the police to where we are, and then we’re done! We _have_ to get rid of them, and every second we waste is another they’re getting further away!”

Oh, they were closer than they thought, Ostentatia couldn’t help but grin. It was fun to know that they were able to surprise and strike fear into their enemies, even if it was mostly piggybacking off of the Bad Kids’ reputation (though even that was slightly inaccurate. They hadn’t _really_ killed a god. Just punched a few, created a couple, brought another back from extinction. Okay, most of that had been Kristen). 

“So some of us need to stay here and then-”

“OH WHAT THE-” 

“That’s us.” Katja hissed under her breath, holding the pipe in her hands up before racing in. 

“Everyone shut your eyes!” Ostentatia gave out a warning as she followed Katja in, swirling her hands before pointing them up at the ceiling, where only a moment later, a blinding ball of absolute Daylight appeared, lighting up the dark, dilapidated tunnel room as if it were the middle of the day.

Everyone inside the room shouted out in surprise at the light while Ostentatia’s friends plus Aelwyn closed their eyes quickly enough to avoid the worst of it, charging into what was on paper a very unfair fight.

There were indeed twelve people in there, all gruff and cranky looking and all armed with an assortment of knives and weapons. Almost _over_ -armed, in Ostentatia’s opinion, as if they had examined their two encounters with the teens and decided to overcompensate in preparation for the inevitable third. 

But right now, most of them were just holding their hands over their eyes or striking out wildly, completely blinded by her spell. 

Ostentatia spotted the one holding Fig’s guitar pretty quickly, partly because it was a very distinctive guitar, and partly because he was currently locked in battle with what appeared to be nothing over it, jolting back and forth like a mime in the middle of an act, his eyes squeezed tightly shut while he shouted for assistance. 

Daylight was a pretty neat spell for catching people by surprise, but it didn’t cause any damage, and the blindness couldn’t be relied upon to last very long. So the rest of them didn’t waste any time jumping into action. Katja was already running over to the man wrestling with a still-invisible Fig over her guitar, pipe ready to cause some damage, while everyone else had scattered, most of them in the same boat Ostentatia was in of having a far more limited pool of spells available than usual. 

Looking to her left, she saw Kristen pelt the sharp rock she’d been carrying for a while at one of the men, completely and utterly failing to hit him. But when the rock hit the ground close by the man pivoted towards the sound, setting him up for a surprise when Kristen ran into him with a glowing, spiritual staff, seemingly identical to the one Kristen usually wielded, except for the fact that it was being used like a physical weapon, Kristen ‘holding’ onto it and swinging it like a regular staff.

Well, it wouldn’t do to be outdone by her fellow cleric. It only took a moment for Ostentatia to summon a Spiritual Weapon of her own, a translucent pale yellow mace, bigger and spikier than the one she usually wielded herself, floating above her head before she sent it towards one of the other kidnappers. 

She hung back from getting too close, as about four of the other men suddenly shrieked at something none of them could see, running away to the back of the room. A few of the others recovered enough from the Daylight spell to finally begin fighting back, drawing knives, machetes, clubs, and one or two guns.

Now _that_ could be a problem. 

“Ha!” But Fig’s triumphant declaration, coming from a vague spot to Ostentatia’s left, that could be nothing but a solution. 

Sure enough, only a few moments later a swirl of magical daggers appeared in front of the man that had been wrestling with Fig for the guitar, the poor soul immediately screaming and trying to bat them away. 

“Someone start looking!” Katja called out to them, presumably not finishing the sentence with ‘for our stuff!’ to try and keep some sort of confusion among their enemies as to what they were up to. 

“Got it!” Ostentatia called out, since she didn’t have much of a reason to get up close and person anyway, with her Spiritual Weapon able to do some damage for her. So she began bolting around the sides of the room, watching Danielle summon a hoard of grasping weeds and vines to entangle some of the men before they could get close to her, Katja locked in battle with two others, knives on pipe, and Kristen still going at it with a combination of her Spiritual Weapon staff and as many Sacred Flames as she could spam as quickly as she could.

It only took a cursory glance for Ostentatia to realise that the rest of their things _weren’t_ in this big massive room unless they were very well hidden. However, there were some doors besides the one they’d entered through, and so off she went, only looking back over her shoulder to direct her Spiritual Weapon into attacking whichever enemy was closest at the time every now and then. 

The first door she opened led to an irritatingly dark room, and Ostentatia lit up her ring before diving in, tipping over boxes and chairs and anything in her way. 

After a few moments, she heard footsteps behind her and wheeled around to spot Aelwyn joining her, a serious yet still somehow extremely annoyed look on her face. 

“Anything in here yet?” She asked. 

“Not yet-” Ostentatia resumed her search, pulling out drawers in search of anything familiar. Aelwyn joined her, even more frantic than her, scowling with each passing moment. “There’s nothing here!”

“Then keep moving!” Aelwyn snapped, leaving the room and, when Ostentatia followed her, bolting to the next one. 

This door was unfortunately locked, and Aelwyn’s hand was crawling with ice in some sort of attempt to weaken it before she suddenly whipped around, a shimmering blue field of energy coming into existence right before a gunshot sounded, a bullet ricocheting off the shield, making Ostentatia duck before it lodged into a nearby wall. 

Aelwyn’s eyes were wide, the shield continuing to shimmer for a few moments while the culprit, someone stuck in Danielle’s vines that had apparently decided to try something else, took aim again. 

“Quick!” Ostentatia shouted, flicking her hand so that her Spiritual Weapon zoomed across the room and slammed into the man with the gun. “Keep going!” 

There was another gunshot that made Ostentatia flinch, but these ones weren’t aimed at her or Aelwyn, so she jogged towards the door Aelwyn was at, kicking it while Aelwyn got back to freezing it.

“Stop them!” 

This _had_ to be the right door, it _had_ to be, Ostentatia thought frantically as she and Aelwyn tried to bust it down, before there was a sudden pain splitting through her side.

She screamed, spinning around and waving her hand to send her Spiritual Weapon careening into _someone_ , and Aelwyn had cast another Shield, protecting herself from getting hit but unable to do anything for Ostentatia. 

“Shit-” Aelwyn tugged desperately at the door handle one more time before taking a step away, half in front of Ostentatia and blocking her from getting shot again. “This is _so_ stupid-”

She held up her hands and the enemy closest to them, trying to advance with gun still in hand, was suddenly wreathed in flames. He began shrieking and shouting, almost dancing in place as they burned brightly for nearly ten seconds before dampening down, leaving him extremely singed, and very unwilling to get any closer. 

Meanwhile, Ostentatia leaned against the door for support, pressing her hands to her injured side and healing herself.

“I wonder how far away the others are.” Ostentatia wondered aloud.

“Unless any of them have a Teleport prepared, too far.” Aelwyn retorted, once again turning back to the door. “Okay, _far_ more than just two or three of these people have guns.”

As if to make her point, there were the sounds of more gunshots, each one deafening in the enclosed underground space, which was already filled with shouts, grunts, and the occasional sick chord from Fig’s guitar, which she was absolutely shredding with glee now that she had it back. 

With the finished healing spell leaving her with a sharp ache in her side but a closed wound, Ostentatia bit the inside of her cheek and mourned one of her favourite shirts, now bloodstained. They were _such_ a pain to clean. 

“Oh, if only Penny were here.” Ostentatia mourned as the two of them continued to struggle with a stupid locked door, resorting to just kicking at it until the wood began to splinter. “Or, like, my mace.”

“Reinforcements!” Someone shouted just as Ostentatia and Aelwyn threw themselves against the door at the same time, their efforts finally rewarded with one final shattering of wood, the two of them falling to the ground as the door gave way.

Dizzy from the shock, Ostentatia scrambled back around to get a look at the battlefield, just long enough to see that these reinforcements were _not_ for them.

“Ah, shit.” She grumbled.

At the same moment, Aelwyn was looking behind her, into the area their locked door had been hiding.

“Oh, gods dammit.” She scowled. 

* * *

It was a corridor. Another long, dark, stupid, awful, goes-to-who-knows-where, terrible corridor. _That’s_ what their locked door had been hiding. 

Because absolutely _nothing_ could go her way today, could it? 

Then she looked over her shoulder to see another gaggle of men with guns and pipes and- oh, one of them had a sword. Wonderful. Just wonderful — running into the room through the door Aelwyn and the others had initially entered through.

They had had an advantage in sheer power, even when their spellcasters (which was all of them but Katja) were stuck with a limited pool of spells, but twelve on six had been a tough call to begin with, and eighteen on six? Yeah, they were in trouble. 

And except for Fig’s guitar, they hadn’t found any of their stolen items. Wonderful. Just absolutely _wonderful._

She was never chaperoning an Aguefort event again. She’d rather do a hundred hours of picking up trash from the side of the road for community service. Or read to children in a library or something. 

Looking at the others still locked in battle, it had been a bit rough on them too. Fig seemed to be having a brilliant time, letting out riff after riff. Danielle had avoided wild shaping but instead had managed to pick up a machete as a weapon and was slicing wildly, though based on a large gash that travelled up her arm and the way she was favouring one leg, she hadn’t had a very easy time getting used to it. Katja was faring perhaps the best of them, but her obvious lack of magic also meant their attackers had picked on her as the least unpredictable of them to fight, resulting on her getting absolutely ganged up on while Kristen tried and half-succeeded to draw their attention away. 

All four of them were injured, and although their attackers had also been thoroughly beaten, three or four of them lying on the ground and groaning, these reinforcements were fresh and ready to kill. They needed to get out of here. 

If any of these dumbasses died, _she_ was the one who was going to get in trouble.

And they were her sister’s friends too or whatever. And she kind of liked Kristen and Fig. And Katja was alright. And Danielle and Ostentatia weren’t obnoxious. But whatever. 

Aelwyn looked down at the tunnel she and Ostentatia had smashed a door open to. It only seemed to lead into darkness, with no indication of how long it was, if it lead into more locked doors, if it led anywhere at all.

But it had been locked, and there had to be a reason for it.

She was also pretty sure they didn’t really have many other options. 

“Get going!” She pulled at the back of Ostentatia’s shirt to encourage her to get to her first, pushing her down the hallway to get started on running. 

“What- but our stuff!” 

“Can’t use it if we’re dead!” Aelwyn shouted back, stabbing a finger down the hallway. “Get moving, freshman!”

Ostentatia visibly huffed at the implicit pulling of rank (sure, Aelwyn had never officially graduated high school, but she was still older) but lit up her magic ring again and began pelting down the tunnel, the clapping of her sandals on the ground echoing. 

“Teenagers!” Aelwyn called out into the battlefield, catching the attention of the four other girls, and a fair amount of their enemies. She gestured towards the open door with her arms, before tossing up another Shield as three separate bullets were shot at her. 

The way she was burning through her spell slots for this… and even when most of her spells were currently totally useless! 

Two of the bullets were completely deflected, but the third struck one of her arms, eliciting a string of curses. 

“Let’s go!” Katja, thank god for her common sense, caught on quickly, ducking around enemies to begin bolting for the door, the others all snapping into action quickly afterward. 

Fig was the first to get through, running backward for a moment to swing her guitar over to her back and flip off her attackers before spinning back around and whooping her way down the tunnel. Kristen was next, wheezing about how being hit in the stomach with a pipe _hurt_ , Katja bolted through with a tight nod in Aelwyn’s direction, and then Danielle was last, slowed down by her injured leg until she leaned forward a little to heal it on the fly, straightening up and picking up her pace.

Aelwyn had paused at the door only to be prepared to throw up some more shields in a flimsy attempt to cover their escape, but Danielle seemed to have a similar idea, turning around and holding her hands up in a way that could almost be mistaken as her surrendering before vines and roots burst from the ground in front of her from all sides, blocking the doorway in seconds. 

Gunshots immediately began pelting through the barricade, and Aelwyn pushed Danielle’s head downwards before either of them could get shot, before pushing her along in the direction of the others.

“Phew! That was close!” Danielle exclaimed as they got moving, still limping on her leg a little, but not as much as she previously had.

Aelwyn just gritted her teeth together, holding her arm against her chest. “How long do you think those vines can hold?”

“Ohhhh, hard to say-” Danielle pursed her lips together, still very chipper about this entire scenario. “Depends how quickly they can chop?”

Not very long, then. Aelwyn kept her eyes on the light from Ostentatia’s ring further ahead of them, and the shadows of the other girls in between them. “I’m so glad I never went to Aguefort.” 

“It’s a lot more fun once you get used to it!” Danielle said brightly.

“Oh, I _am_ used to it,” Aelwyn grumbled. “I wish I wasn’t.” 

Danielle just smiled and continued to run. Ahead of them, Aelwyn could hear Kristen, Fig, and Ostentatia excitedly chattering about where they were going now and groaning about they hadn’t been able to retrieve any of the other belongings and (what they were most upset by, because of course) the scavenger hunt items. Because that was the true loss here. The scavenger hunt. 

“Teenagers.” She sighed under her breath, and Danielle tilted her head towards her. 

“Aren’t you nineteen?” Danielle asked.

“No.” Aelwyn lied. 

Unlike the other tunnels they had traversed, this one didn’t have any turns or doors that they had come across. Which was great for deciding where they were going. Not so great since it meant that when the kidnappers broke through Danielle’s vine wall, there was no question where they were going. 

So they were forced to debrief and regroup as they ran.

“Who’s hurt?” Katja shouted out, getting a chorus of responses from almost everyone. “Okay. Who’s _dying?”_

That didn’t get any serious response, and so Katja continued running through lists of injuries so that they could work out what kind of healing they needed. Aelwyn’s only major injury was the gunshot wound in her arm, which had effectively ruined that hand, but compared to some of the others, was still doing pretty well. 

Ostentatia had already healed herself of just about every injury she’d had, and all the others were in various stages of pain, so eventually Danielle just declared a mass wave of healing, a ring of soft pink light spiralling out in a short range to get them all. Aelwyn’s arm still ached, and Katja, Danielle, and Kristen in particular still didn’t look _super_ great, but it was better shape than they’d been in before, and they didn’t have time to stop and heal everything. 

“Godddddd, this tunnel is lasting forever!” Kristen wheezed. They’d all grouped closer together now, and were confident that they still had a halfway decent headstart on their kidnappers. “Just give us a dead-end or _something!”_

“Do NOT give us a dead-end please!” Aelwyn said. “I’d like to actually enjoy my life for longer than a few months, thanks!” 

“At least if we die, we die as a family!” Fig declared dramatically.

“None of you are my family.” 

Both Fig _and_ Kristen gasped, and Aelwyn genuinely couldn’t tell if they were offended or not. “Does Mordred Manor mean nothing to you?”

“For the record, I also don’t consider Aelwyn family.” Ostentatia piped up. “But I do tolerate her!”

“Thanks, Ostentatia.” Aelwyn deadpanned. 

“Sometimes tolerating is all you need,” Kristen said sagely.

“I’d consider you all family,” Danielle said with a beaming smile. 

“We’re not going to die, you dorks,” Katja said, and Aelwyn could _hear_ her rolling her eyes. “We’re going to get out of here and consider it a wonderful bonding experience.” 

“Yeah, and once Ayda and the others get here it’ll be a party!” Fig said.

“Like a girl’s day out in the city!” Danielle said, entirely genuinely. Oh, how ruined were they all that being kidnapped counted as a fun day out. 

“Under the city, technically,” Kristen said.

“A girl’s day out under the city!” 

Aelwyn sighed dramatically, shaking her head. Damn it, they were slightly endearing. “I cannot wait for this day to be over.”

“Awwww, you love it, Aelwyn.” Fig teased. “I can see you’re smiling!” 

“I am not!” Aelwyn covered her face — she was _not_ smiling, the corners of her mouth were _slightly_ turned up _at most_ — but it was too late. Even Katja was laughing now. 

“You’re having fun!”

“I should’ve let the Nightmare King kill you all.” That just made them all laugh harder. It used to be so easy to consider everyone younger than her nothing but dirt beneath her boot. Now she was around high schoolers constantly and it was ruining her sense of self-preservation. And dignity. 

God, was this why Adaine had asked her to do this? So that she could have fun? 

This definitely wasn’t the kind of fun Adaine had imagined. But alas, here they were. 

“Well, we still need to _survive_ long enough to meet up with the others to make it a girl’s day out under the city.” She pointed out, sparking another chorus of ‘Girl’s Day Out!’ from the others. 

She shook her head again, but now she really was smirking. Whatever. If you can’t beat them, join them. 

* * *

Getting to Grantlies Station was easy. Finding the spot where the old tunnels had been blocked off and breaking into them had also been easy, thanks to most city-dwellers being far more inclined to mind their own business than worry about what the gang of high schoolers was doing snooping around a subway station.

Zelda was also pretty sure that a lot of them had heard that Aguefort Academy had descended on Bastion City, and so they probably assumed it was just Aguefort Academy nonsense, if they hadn’t called in sick and bunkered down at home. Their reputation preceded them even outside Elmville, apparently. 

But after they got into the tunnels, things got a little trickier. 

“Look, Locate Objects doesn’t tell me exactly which turns I need to make, just the straight direction.” Adaine was saying after they made another ill-advised turn. 

They were headed in the right direction, and they were tracking down Fig’s feather from Ayda. At least until Adaine suddenly started, blinking her eyes. “Uh…”

“Is something wrong?” Zelda asked. She’d been feeling a bit restless ever since they’d gone underground, worried about what was happening to her friends. They were all strong and smart, but she was still nervous. In her hands, Eli the pigeon cooed softly, utterly unperturbed by all of this.

“She’s out of range,” Adaine said, grimacing. “I can’t track her anymore.” 

“Are they leaving the tunnels, then?” Penny asked. “Maybe they found another way out.” 

“Or she’s in a field that blocks locating spells or something,” Adaine suggested.

“Can we scry on her again?” Antiope asked, glancing at Ayda, who had frowned after Adaine delivered the news. 

“I can scry… three more times if it is necessary. But if they are still in the tunnels, I do not think it will help us locate them any quicker.” Ayda said.

“I can try looking for other stuff. Hold on.” Adaine said, waving her hands for a moment before brightening up. “I’ve got a bead on Kristen’s staff!” 

“I will try Sending Fig another message to see if she is okay,” Ayda said, as Adaine began leading them through the tunnels again in the general direction her spell was pointing her in. 

It only took a few more moments for Ayda to report back that Fig and the others were all together and on the move, having escaped their initial imprisonment. They didn’t know where in the tunnels they were or where they were headed, but they _did_ know that they were almost certainly being pursued. 

Every second counted, so Zelda and the others kept on the move, staying on alert for any of the kidnappers that might be hanging around. Luckily for them, they didn’t run into anyone. But Zelda couldn’t help but think that meant they were all looking for the rest of her friends. 

“An underground base is pretty cool, you know,” Sam murmured, even though her nose was scrunched up. “Would be cooler if it were a bit cleaner, but still.” 

“Or if they had directions,” Penny said, partially leading the way along with Adaine and Antiope while the others followed behind. 

“Woah, guys, hold up,” Antiope said, stopping in front. “Door’s open.”

Peering out from behind everyone else, Zelda spotted the door Antiope was talking about, a wooden one that was swung wide open, dim light spilling from within. They approached cautiously, but when Penny was sent to peer around the corner, she reported seeing no one inside.

“But I think the others got in a fight.” She said, gesturing vaguely inside the room as if to tell them all to see for themselves. 

When Zelda made her way in the room, she could see Penny was right. The big chamber they found themselves in was deserted, but Zelda could see newly grown vines that had sprouted from the earth only to be trampled and slashed, a sure sign of Danielle’s work. There were scorch marks on the floor, a few dropped weapons, and splatters of blood. Mostly red, but Zelda spotted a few darker splotches that were probably from Katja. 

There were some doors on the far side, three locked and two open, one seemingly forcibly so. That one also had more vines that seemed to have been protecting the entrance, but they had been hacked and slashed to pieces, leaving an opening.

“I think we found the tunnel they went down,” Sam said mildly, peering down the tunnel. “How much do you think we missed them by?”

They all began to spread out to investigate, Adaine beelining to one of the closed doors with Penny close behind her, Antiope and Ayda investigating some of the wreckage of the fight, and Zelda hesitating for a moment before deciding to follow Adaine and Penny since they seemed to have the most direction right at that moment. 

By the time she caught up, Penny was already picking the lock on the door, swinging it open with a flourish and poking her head inside. “Oh yeah. Here’s their stuff.” 

Sure enough, all of their friends stolen items were piled inside, as if the kidnappers hadn’t been sure of what to do with them. Zelda could recognise the staffs that Kristen and Danielle used, Katja’s favourite axe, Ostentatia’s holy symbol. 

And a pile of random items that must’ve been the groups’ scavenger hunt collection. 

“How’s their list looking?” Sam asked as soon as she had joined the others at the room. 

“Is that the primary concern right now?” Ayda asked, her fiery feathers bristling as she began picking through the items, presumably looking for Fig’s belongings. 

“Yeah, I wanna know what they’ve got,” Sam said, picking up a checker-print hat and trying it on, looking at herself in the crystal’s camera and posing.

They all began poking through the pile, picking up things they recognised as belonging to a specific person and guessing on everything else, splitting it all up more or less evenly among the six of them, including all the scavenger hunt items, which seemed just as nonsensical as their own as far as Zelda could tell.

“Alright, it is time to pursue our friends.” Ayda was clearly restless, as they all gathered near the vine-encrusted entrance to the other tunnel. 

“Seems pretty one way to me,” Antiope said after peering down it. “Fig didn’t mention any turns when you talked to her?”

“No.” Ayda shook her head. “I can fly down the tunnel, it will undoubtedly be faster.”

“I don’t know if I like the idea of splitting up,” Zelda said, before pausing. “Though I _can_ run pretty fast.” 

“I think the sooner we catch up, the better,” Penny said. “Between the six of us, we’ve gotta have a way to speed up.”

“I can fly,” Sam said, raising a hand, and Adaine quickly added that she could fly as well. 

“Well if you three can fly and Zelda can run, we just need a way to get Penny and I moving faster,” Antiope said.

“I can carry one of you.” Ayda offered.

“I could go piggy-back with someone,” Penny said.

“You could ride with me,” Zelda said. “You might have to hold onto Eli though.”

Sam clapped her hands together with a laugh. “Oh, we’re going to be _zooming_ , the others won’t even believe it.” 

“Sounds like a plan. If we run into the bad guys on the way, we can beat them all up before they even reach the others.” Antiope said, cracking her knuckles.

Everyone quickly got into position for their sprint/fly down the tunnels. Well, Adaine and Sam mostly just stood there waiting for the others to get ready, but Zelda took off her backpack to pass it on to Penny, who hefted it along with her own before climbing onto her back. It was a fairly familiar maneuver, because all of the other Maidens thought it was absolutely hysterical how fast Zelda could run and thought a piggyback ride was far more entertaining than simply teleporting somewhere or whatever else they could do.

Ayda picked up Antiope, and then they climbed through the remains of the vines. It must’ve been a hectic fight, and Zelda could only imagine what it must’ve been like for the spellcasters. Hopefully, they weren’t too far behind.

“So, are we racing or not?” Sam said casually, flicking her fingers and beginning to hover a few inches above the ground with a sly grin on her face. 

Zelda couldn’t help but crack a smile despite the situation, especially when Penny responded with a haughty “Of _course_ we are!” 

“Girls, girls, now is not the time for pointless competition, our friends are in danger,” Antiope said, shaking her head disapprovingly. “On an entirely unrelated note, Ayda, how fast can you fly?” 

“Extremely fast,” Ayda said solemnly. “You are all going to lose.”

And then she was off, a veritable fireball zooming down into the tunnels, a triumphant cheer from Antiope quickly fading into the distance.

“Oh _WhAT?”_ Sam sputtered, flying off in hot pursuit, a laughing Adaine following only a moment later. 

“What are you waiting for Zelda?” Penny asked, after a few moments passed and they were still standing at the entrance. 

Smiling shyly, Zelda made sure Penny was holding on tight before getting into position to start running. “Just letting them have a head start.” 

“Ohohoho, dramatic, I love it,” Penny said, shifting her hold on Zelda’s back to be more secure. “The pigeon is strapped in and ready to go.” 

Zelda was the champion of the school track team for a very good reason. 

* * *

Katja had elected herself the unofficial leader of her scavenger hunt for a few reasons. Partly because she liked being in charge of silly things like scavenger hunts, and also because she knew that if she didn’t, the combined competitive and leadership force of Penny and Antiope were going to steamroll them, without even thinking of all the other teams in the competition. 

But after the scavenger hunt had added ‘escape from kidnappers’ to the objective list, her leadership position became unfortunately more serious. But hey, such was the life of an adventurer. 

Everyone was in high spirits even though they’d lost the opportunity to steal back any of their belongings bar Fig’s guitar, because Ayda had Sent Fig another message. The others were on their way, they were looking, and Adaine had been able to locate Kristen’s staff, and so they’d probably be able to find everything else too.

So all they needed to do was evade death long enough for them to catch up. Which changed their game of scavenger hunt into something more akin to hide and seek. 

Except it was a really stupid game since this tunnel only went one way. Katja was pretty sure it had curved around a few times and made some sharp turns every now and then, but there were never any offshoots, never any doors. 

“Oh my god, I need a breeeeeak.” Kristen said, and when Katja looked over her shoulder she saw the sophomore wheezing, her hands on her knees. “We’ve been running for _ever_ , what is up with these stupid tunnels?”

“Maybe this is why they were closed,” Danielle suggested, all of them coming to a stop so as not to leave Kristen behind.

“Or maybe they were built this way on purpose by criminals,” Ostentatia said. “Spooky.” 

“How long have we even been running?” Fig asked.

“Like, ten minutes. Tops.” Aelwyn said, tapping her watch. “Including that other break we took.” 

“You’ve been keeping track of the time?” 

“Yeah, I want to make sure I can tell Adaine exactly how much of this fun, relaxing school trip I spent running for my life. For posterity’s sake.” 

“We can’t stay still for long, we’ve gotta keep moving,” Katja said, shifting her weight from foot to foot anxiously. As long as they were reasonably ahead of the kidnappers, they would be alright. But if they got too close, there was nothing stopping them from shooting them all with nowhere to hide. They weren’t slow, but there was also no telling how fast their kidnappers were either. 

“Yeah, just give me a second,” Kristen said. “Phew. Okay, okay, I’m good. After this we need to like, get some smoothies or something.”

“I would kill a man for a smoothie right now.” Aelwyn sighed, as Kristen stretched out her arms and they were able to get moving again, albeit at a slightly slower pace. Sprinting as fast as they could for ten minutes straight was _not_ fun. 

“My dad makes the best smoothies,” Danielle said. “Toast loves them. Do you think Toast is doing alright?”

There was a short pause. 

“Did… did Ayda _mention_ that Toast was with them in any of her messages?” Katja asked.

“Nope.” Fig said, popping the ‘p’ as they jogged. 

“Oh my god Toast is dead,” Ostentatia said, and Danielle gasped.

“There’s no way Toast is dead. That fox survived the Red Wastes with nothing to protect him but a sunhat, he’ll be fine.” Katja scoffed. Inwardly, she could only imagine the trouble Toast could get into. He had maybe three brain cells to rub together. Maximum. 

“I bet he’s having a great time,” Kristen said cheerfully. “We’re having a girl’s day out, Toast is having a Toast’s day out by himself!” 

“We’re totally going to have to go find that fox after this, aren’t we?” Aelwyn said with an exasperated sigh. 

“Well, we can’t just _leave_ him in the city!” Danielle protested. “It’s not his natural habitat!”

“Neither is living with you, technically.” Fig pointed out.

“Oh no, Danielle’s place is probably closer to nature than the actual forest,” Katja said.

Everyone began debating the most likely places for Toast to go within the city with no supervision or guidance as they continued jogging down the tunnel. They went around another bend, and then Katja began to squint down into the darkness in front of them.

The darkness… that didn’t seem _as_ dark as it used to be. 

“Hey, Ostentatia, kill your light for a moment,” Katja asked.

“Huh? Why?” Ostentatia asked. 

“I want to check something. Just for a second.” Katja said. Ostentatia shrugged her shoulders and extinguished the light from her ring, plunging them all into pitch darkness for a moment as their light source vanished.

But after blinking her eyes and getting used to the darkness, Katja got the confirmation she was looking for. 

“It’s lighter.” She looked down the tunnel, then back over her shoulder from where they’d come. “We’re getting close!”

“Oh, I see it!” Fig exclaimed. “You’re right!” 

“I still can’t see anything,” Kristen said bluntly, and after a second Ostentatia lit up her ring again, illuminating everyone’s excited faces.

“I was beginning to think this tunnel would never end,” Aelwyn said, amongst the relieved chatter of everyone else. 

Katja smiled, thankful that they were finally reaching the end of this nonsense, before she spotted something behind them.

Another light, far behind them, waving erratically. 

A flashlight.

Another moment passed, and then she began to hear pounding footsteps.

“Oh shit.” They’d caught up to them. “Ostentatia, kill the light!”

“What?” Ostentatia asked, only for her face to fall as they all began to hear the approaching enemies. A moment later, the light disappeared once more.

Using her own natural dark vision, Katja reached out for Kristen’s hand in the darkness, knowing humans were terrible at seeing in the dark, and began to run in the direction of freedom, the others all following her as quickly as they could. 

The tiny difference between utter darkness and a little bit of light that Katja had noticed before was barely enough to keep her on track and prevent herself from running into the walls, everyone panting and their feet pounding on the ground. 

But their attackers had already picked up that they were close, and Katja could hear their shouting behind them, still far enough away that they weren’t in a desperate situation, but too close for her liking.

“It’s getting lighter!” Ostentatia exclaimed, and soon Kristen wasn’t simply hanging onto Katja for dear life but able to place her feet more surely, squinting in light that was slowly getting more and more visible.

They made one more slight curve, and then all of a sudden there was daylight.

Directly behind a massive barred grate.

“Oh, you’ve got to be _kidding_ me!” Aelwyn protested, and in a matter of seconds, they were upon it, shaking it to see how strong it was. Very.

Katja pulled out her pipe and began bashing at the edges, the others all either trying to do the same with whatever they had available or simply looking through.

“It’s like a shipyard!” Kristen exclaimed. “There’s boats, and shipping containers-” 

“Awesome! Doesn’t help us get out!” Katja said, rearing up to hit the grate again. It shuddered, the clang echoing through the tunnel, but it didn’t budge. 

“They’re over here! They’re stuck!”

“Quick! Get them!” 

Shots began to ring out, and the girls all ducked, covering their heads.

“Oh, shit shit shit shit-” 

Katja turned back to the grate with a mission, jabbing into what she perceived to be the weakest points as hard as she could. Aelwyn had scrambled around to face the outside, pressing her face up against the grate as if she was looking for something, and not seeming pleased with what she saw.

“This is not going to be good-” Katja heard Aelwyn mutter, looking over her shoulder to see Fig strumming her guitar, sending an earth-shattering wave of sound reverberating down the tunnel, eliciting screams from their swiftly advancing attackers, Ostentatia sending a bolt of flame gliding in the same direction while Kristen had a glowing hand on Danielle’s shoulder. 

There were more gunshots, and Katja heard Fig cry out in pain, her music momentarily screeching to a halt.

The grate wasn’t opening. It wasn’t opening.

“Danielle, do you still have a Wildshape? Can you turn into something that can fit through this grate?” Aelwyn asked, her voice surprisingly calm. 

“Yes? What-”

“Alright, do that now. Everyone else, get ready for a rough landing. This _might_ not be extremely accurate.” Aelwyn said, and Katja was confused enough to stop bashing in the grate for a moment, looking towards the elf in disbelief.

“What are you-” 

She didn’t have time to finish the sentence, because Aelwyn snapped her fingers, and then all of a sudden they weren’t in the tunnel anymore. 

* * *

Danielle blinked and all of her friends were gone. 

For a moment, she just stared in abject horror, before there was another gunshot just above her head, and she realised that she was _very much still in danger._

Thankfully, at that moment she remembered what Aelwyn had said, closing her eyes to focus long enough to wild shape into the first animal she could think of with the late afternoon sky outside just within reach. 

A second later Danielle, in the form of a small robin, flew out from between the bars of the grate, leaving their kidnappers behind her. She flew out and then directly up, the ocean breeze catching her wings and spinning her around before she regained control.

The others. Where had the others gone? Aelwyn must’ve done _something_ , but what? 

For the first time, she got a good look around her surroundings. Danielle found herself flying above a big shipyard that bordered some docks, with dozens of boats docked on the ocean to her right and then what seemed like a sea of shipping containers stretching out in front of her, stacked in piles like a maze. 

Where were they? Were they all together? What if they weren’t even on this plane anymore? Danielle found herself chirping anxiously as she continued to fly before she spotted movement down among the ship containers.

Diving down, eventually Danielle got close enough to realise that it was Fig, sprawled out on the ground with her face scrunched up and blood beginning to pool on her shirt, her guitar lying at her side. 

Danielle transformed back into herself a few feet before she hit the surface, stumbling a little as she landed and making Fig start with surprise.

“Holy sh- Danielle!” Fig sat up, immediately grimacing and regretting it. “Urgghhhh, getting shot _sucks.”_

“Need some healing?” Danielle offered, but Fig just slapped her own hand over her stomach.

“Don’t worry, I got it. What did Aelwyn just do?” 

“I don’t know,” Danielle said, her head swivelling around to look for the others, but there was no one to be seen. “Some kind of teleport?”

“If she could teleport this whole time, why didn’t she do it before?” Fig climbed to her feet with an absent hand of assistance from Danielle, picking up her guitar and brushing it off. “Ugh, how do we even get out of here?” 

“I guess she wouldn’t have been able to take all of us? I got left behind.” Danielle said. “And I don’t think you were all teleported to the same place.” 

“Wizard spells.” Fig sighed. “What a mess. Come on, we gotta find the others.” 

Danielle nodded, and they began walking between the shipping containers, rounding a corner and keeping an eye out for the others. In the distance, Danielle could see the tips of masts from ships and yachts, and there was a crane maybe five shipping container lengths or so away from them, but no sign of their friends.

“Katja?! Ostentatia?!” Danielle called out, but between the ocean breeze and the sound of waves crashing against the rocky cliffs of the edge of the shipyard, she was pretty sure her shouts were carried away into nothing. 

“I could shoot something into the sky,” Fig suggested, some sparks shooting from her fingertips as if to give a mini demonstration. “Like a signal flare.” 

Danielle opened her mouth to answer, before the sharp sound of gunshots split the air. She and Fig instinctively ducked, but they weren’t shot at them. Instead, both girls turned in the direction of the grated tunnel they had just escaped, maybe seventy feet away from them, where Danielle could see shadows of people clumped at the end of it, sparks flying. Then, with one resounding cracked, the grate split, the men inside pushing it open with considerable effort.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Danielle murmured.

“Hmm. Maybe a no on the signal flare that would tell them exactly where we are.” Fig said.

“Maybe no, yeah.” 

The two of them quickly ducked out of sight around the corner of a shipping container, Fig peeking out around the side to check where the bad guys were before turning around to face her. “Alright, so we don’t know how to get around this shipyard, we’ve both been shot at some point, all our friends are missing and you still don’t have your focus or anything.” 

“I do have this machete,” Danielle said, holding up the weapon that she’d managed to steal from someone back in the large chamber.

“Hey, that’s pretty good.” Fig brightened up a little. “Still, I feel like we’d probably be a _little_ outmatched if they find us.” 

“We’re out in the open now, though,” Danielle said. “I could Call Lightning.”

Fig’s eyes widened, and then she began to grin. “Oh. Oh, that’s very good.”

“But I still don’t know how successful we’d be with just the two of us,” Danielle said.

Fig’s grin slipped into a more thoughtful frown. “Okay, well, it’s a backup plan at least. I think we should be looking for the others first.” 

Danielle nodded, and then both of them stiffened up as they heard the sound of old metal clattering to the floor, then an unfortunate number of sets of feet thudding onto the ground. 

“Godsdamnit- where did they go?” 

Danielle exchanged a glance with Fig, tilting her head towards their current sole escape route, further into the maze of shipping containers. Fig just shrugged her shoulders a little, before tuning back in to what the bad guys were saying. 

“They teleported! We’re never going to find them!” 

Hey, maybe they’d just give up here! That would be nice!

“They can’t have gone far…”

Maybe not.

“They teleported! They could’ve gone anywhere!”

“Just shut up and look! We need _something_ to show for all this mess!” 

Shivers were crawling up Danielle’s spine, and she had a feeling they weren’t going to get any useful information from eavesdropping any further. More likely they’d just get caught. She tugged loosely at the sleeve of Fig’s jacket, quietly getting to her feet and beginning to tip-toe away from their kidnappers, picking up the pace into a jog once they were twenty feet or so away from where they’d been sitting. 

The shipyard truly was a maze, the shipping containers so tall that Danielle had no idea what was on the other side until she turned around them, though thus far she’d only found more shipping containers and none of their friends. 

Fig had pulled out a small wire and was pointing in random directions every few seconds, whispering out everyone’s name before picking a new direction and trying again, which seemed similarly unsuccessful for now.

On the plus side, they hadn’t heard the sounds of any fights, which hopefully mean the bad guys hadn’t found anyone either. 

At least until that was quickly ruined by the sound of a high-pitched shriek. They froze in their tracks, immediately pivoting in the direction of the sound. Above the lip of a shipping container, towards the ocean, Danielle saw smoke begin to rise. 

“Uh…” Fig said. 

“Did that sound like Kristen or Aelwyn?” Danielle asked, because it definitely didn’t sound like Ostentatia or Katja. 

“Hard to tell. But we should check it out anyway, right?” 

“Right.” 

They ran off again, even though Danielle’s legs were starting to get very tired of the constant exertion with almost no breaks. They bolted around a corner, skidding to a stop just in time to see the cause of the smoke.

There was a collection of the bad guys, for sure. Most of them had weapons raised or drawn, but the first ones Danielle really noticed were two at the front crumpled on the ground, completely burnt. 

Standing on the deck of a yacht, hands raised and looking completely frazzled, was Ostentatia. Of the three yachts between her and the rest of the ship yard, two of them were now on fire. 

Danielle’s mouth dropped open, and Ostentatia noticed them, a relieved smile crossing her face followed quickly by a loose shrug. 

“Only rich people own yachts, right?” Fig asked casually.

“Usually, in my experience,” Danielle answered. In front of them, the bad guys were slow to react to an apparently unexpectedly powerful assault from Ostentatia, which had left them with a force of six. Didn’t discount the possibility of others being hidden away somewhere, but Danielle was suddenly a little more confident in their odds. 

“WE WIN-AH SHIT THERE’S A DROP ZELDA ZELDA-!” Another new voice joined the chaos, but this was one that Danielle was thankfully very familiar with. 

A grin sliding onto her face, Danielle turned back towards the grate, to see Zelda, with Penny holding onto her back and to a peaceful looking pigeon for dear life, overshoot the end of the tunnel completely, falling straight over the edge and landing almost flat on her face. 

For a moment, even the kidnappers were silent. Penny rolled off of Zelda’s back, holding the pigeon tight. 

“Hi Penny! Hi Zelda!” Danielle called out. Penny didn’t answer, but Zelda lifted her face from the ground, giving them a shaky thumb’s up. 

“Hi Danielle. How is everything?” She asked, having to shout in order to be heard.

“Pretty good, I’d say! Better now that you’re here!” Danielle returned the thumb’s up, noticing Ayda, carrying Antiope, flying through the grate and noticeably _not_ faceplanting, and then, a few moments later, Sam and Adaine. 

“AWESOME AWESOME WE’RE ALL HERE NOW SOMEONE PLEASE SAVE ME!” Ostentatia shouted from the currently burning yacht she was standing on. 

Shaking her head, Danielle returned to the task at hand, the arrival of their friends breathing new life into the battle. She still hadn’t seen where Katja, Kristen, and Aelwyn were, but nine on six? Now _that_ was a far better matchup. 

* * *

Okay, they were at a shipyard, a bunch of yachts were on fire and half of the others were currently nowhere to be seen. Just a typical fight for them, Adaine supposed. 

Getting her first look at the bad guys, Adaine wasn’t particularly impressed. They were obviously frazzled by a long day that had not gone to plan for them at _all_ , and the arrival of reinforcements, most of whom were currently flying, had done little to improve their confidence or their chances of getting out of here alive.

But rather than doing what was probably the sensible thing and surrender immediately, they elected to double down and cause as much chaos as possible. 

She was still hovering, and she was pretty sure she’d still be able to keep the Fly spell up for another few minutes, so she swung her backpack around to her front, opening it up and digging through it to try to find Aelwyn’s spellbook, which she had picked up. Once she found it, there was then the next problem of finding Aelwyn.

On the battlefield, Penny and Zelda had both gotten to their feet, digging through their own backpacks and pulling out weapons, shields, everything they’d picked up. Zelda rushed straight into battle with a roar, while Penny almost immediately seemed to disappear into the crowd, running around people and ducking behind shipping containers. Next to her, Sam and Ayda were both preparing to cast spells, while Antiope had dropped to the ground, racing towards Danielle and Fig with Danielle and Kristen’s staffs in hand. 

Adaine took a look at the six visible bad guys and quickly concluded that this fight was probably going to last maybe ten seconds longer, and decided to ignore it, flying high above it and swerving around the quickly forming storm cloud that Danielle was creating. 

With a bird’s eye view, it only took her a few moments to spot someone else running around the shipping containers in the direction of the action and fire, swooping down and realising that it was the very sister she’d been looking for. 

When Adaine landed just in front of her, Aelwyn looked surprised for a moment before quickly letting out a massive sigh of relief.

“Thank _goodness._ It’s about time you got here.” Aelwyn said, putting her hands on Adaine’s shoulders, before immediately removing them and grabbing her book. “Oh THANK GOODNESS-”

“Thanks for finding my super important spellbook, Adaine, and for coming to your rescue in your hour of need.” Adaine deadpanned, though the corner of her mouth was curling upwards.

“Yes, yes, you have all my gratitude, which is all immediately cancelled out by you being the reason I got stuck with these children to begin with,” Aelwyn said, casually opening her spellbook and beginning to flick through the pages. Adaine rolled her eyes, and after a few more moments she felt Aelwyn’s hand poke her shoulder. “Thank you, though.” 

“You’re welcome,” Adaine said with a smile. 

Somewhere behind them, lightning lit up the sky, followed by muffled screams. A few moments later there was the sound of a tidal wave swamping approximately four to six yachts, immediately followed by a string of colourful Dwarvish curses.

“We should probably get back to the others,” Adaine said.

“Probably.” 

They began running back around the shipyard, the path very easy to find on account of the lightning, storm clouds, fire, and general chaos that was surrounding the battlefield. With a couple well-placed Dimension Door’s on Adaine’s part, they were able to get back in record time.

But even despite their speed, it was clear that the fight was essentially over. Three more of the bad guys were writhing on the ground and the others were completely surrendered, begging to simply be left alone while Penny, Zelda, and Kristen (who must’ve found her way from somewhere else) were stripping them of all their weapons.

Over near the yachts, Sam was fishing a very waterlogged Ostentatia out of the ocean, while most of the others seemed to be debriefing each other in a group, exchanging items and sorting out who owned what. 

“Cool. Cool. Great job everyone.” Katja was saying, absolutely dripping wet. 

“Did we get everyone?” Antiope asked, doing a headcount of all of them after Adaine and Aelwyn walked up. “No one else got dropped in the ocean?”

“I think that’s all of us.” Fig was smiling brightly, probably because Ayda was hugging her from behind, resulting in her being lifted half a foot off the ground. “Hey Aelwyn, where’d you land?”

“On my face.” Aelwyn blinked wearily. “Who set the yachts on fire?”

“Are we gonna do anything about those yachts, by the way?” Danielle asked, the entire group turning to look at them. Someone had swamped them with a tidal wave or two, which had extinguished most of the fire, but instead left them piled on top of each other on the edge of the dock, half-sunk into the ocean. 

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Fig said, waving a hand. “Only rich people have yachts, right?” 

There were shrugs all around, the healers offering up spells to everyone that needed them while the others slowly grouped up with them.

“What are we going to do with those guys?” Zelda asked, pointing over her shoulder at the collection of bad guys, who were basically huddling together, singed, drenched, and horrified. “Call the police?”

“Considering the mess we made, the police are _probably_ already on their way,” Adaine said, listening to the distant sirens that tended to be going off in a city to try to tell if any of them were approaching the shipyard. 

“Ugh, can we please not deal with the police? It’ll take _forever.”_ Sam groaned, a soaking wet Ostentatia standing next to her trying to untangle her hair from her rings. 

“Yeah, that’ll be a pain. Let’s get out of here and get some donuts or something.” Antiope said.

“Hey, I think a picture of donuts was on our scavenger hunt list,” Kristen said mildly.

A moment passed. 

“THE SCAVENGER HUNT!” 

* * *

Antiope was pretty sure that the rush to get back to their meeting spot was more frantic than the rush to catch up to their kidnapped friends in the tunnels, with their lives potentially on the line. But if there was one thing to get them to forget about the entire day they just had, it was the prospect of missing out on winning a competition. 

By the time they remembered the scavenger hunt competition, it was exactly 3:32 pm. The meeting time was 4 pm. The shipyard was a good hour's walk away from the courtyard meeting place on foot. For normal people.

Between the twelve of them, they managed it in twenty minutes. 

Antiope was wheezing by the time she arrived back at the fountain, after quite literally jumping across rooftops in an attempt to have the most direct route possible. Some other groups had already made it, sitting or standing together with their pile of items and raising their eyebrows when Antiope landed on the ground, dumping out her backpack full of glow in the dark stars, random electrical cords, and a child’s lamp with an octopus poorly painted onto it that she had traded a fancy arrow for at a thrift shop because she didn’t have much of her own money. 

The others all made their own way, but rather than dividing into their two original groups, ended up dumping all of their items together in one big pile, perhaps because they were too frazzled and exhausted to remember which group was which. 

“... Antiope?” Antiope looked up to see her aunt, Miss Jones, standing with a school roll and one eyebrow raised.

Antiope shot her a thumbs up, still catching her breath. “Hey Aunt Corsica- How’s it going?”

“Alright, what happened here exactly? Robbery? Heist gone wrong? Someone get transported to another plane?” With each possible mishap, she pointed to one of the other groups, who all waved cheerfully. They hadn’t been the _only_ ones to have a misadventure, Antiope supposed. 

Made sense. This was Aguefort, after all. 

“I got mistaken for the daughter of a CEO and my whole group got kidnapped,” Danielle said. 

“And we had to go rescue them,” Adaine said, gesturing vaguely to her group members. 

“Would that explain why a grey fox meandered up to us with a chips packet on his head?” Professor Runstaff asked, walking up to them with Toast held safely in her arms, chewing on a stick.

“Oh thank god we don’t have to go looking for him.”

“Toast!” Danielle ran up and took the utterly unbothered fox, cooing and spinning him around in her arms. “What a good boy, going right to the teachers! So smart!”

“I’m pretty sure he’s been all over the city.” Professor Runstaff said, not that Danielle was listening.

“So how’d the rescue go?” Aunt Corsica asked, and Antiope turned her attention back to her.

“Pretty well, you know. We took down most of the group. Burned some yachts. Drowned some yachts.” Antiope shrugged, and her aunt seemed to write something down, checking off some boxes.

“Well done.” Antiope’s aunt flashed her a smile, before clearing her throat. “Alright, everyone! It’s nearly 4 o’clock, so what everyone needs to do is make sure all your items are in a pile, and then place your list on top of it!”

All of the gathered groups did as was asked, sneaking glances at other groups' piles to try and guess how well they had all done. Antiope saw Adaine, Kristen, and Fig waving at Riz, Fabian, and Gorgug, who were all standing by their own groups, before quickly devolving into trash talking and bragging about the nonsense they’d all gotten into that day.

Apparently, someone in Gorgug’s group had ended up getting thrown out a window. Or had thrown someone else out a window. It was hard to tell. 

But the clock struck four, and as one, all of the scavenger hunt lists began to glow, which soon spread to all of the items that were gathered underneath them. Antiope’s eyes widened, and then every glowing pile disappeared in a flash, leaving nothing behind.

For a moment, everyone stood in silence, before another glowing light appeared in the air, next to the teachers that had been supervising. 

The light lengthened and shifted until it fully manifested as a glowing, translucent Arthur Aguefort, a wide smile on his face and cane held in hand.

“And thus we arrive at the conclusion of the Aguefort Adventuring Academy Presents: The Scandalously Charming Springtime Surprise-Packed Palooza of Pastime Paradise: The Version Where It’s Not As Easy To Die 3.0! The Scavenger Hunt. I trust everyone has had a wonderful, educational, and pedagogically sound time!”

There were some scattered whoops and cheers, though the jury was out on whether the projection of Aguefort could hear it. 

“Right now, I should be appearing at all the designated meeting spots for all the adventuring parties scattered throughout the city. I have received the submissions for every group that arrived on time, your teachers calculated your times of arrival and any extra points earned for particular bravery, spectacle, and drama, and your magic lists have calculated how many of the items you collected, or how much cash you slipped beneath the paper.” 

“Wait, we could’ve bribed him?” Fabian’s voice shouted from somewhere behind Antiope. “Why didn’t he say so?” 

“And SO!” Arthur Aguefort held his cane up with a flourish. “I have determined the winners!” 

He cleared his throat, a scroll appearing in his hands and his cane vanishing into flickering motes of light, before quickly running down the list of names. “The combined forces of Adaine Abernant, Aelwyn Abernant, Ayda Aguefort, Kristen Applebees, Antiope Jones, Danielle Barkstock, Katja Cleaver, Zelda Donovan, Figeuroth Faeth, Penny Luckstone, Sam Nightingale and Ostentatia Wallace! Because they were the only group to take down a crime ring on accident AND got the police called to a shipping yard! Everyone else step up your game!” 

Antiope and the others quickly broke out into cheers, jumping up and down and pulling each other into a hug. Antiope found herself stuck in the middle of Kristen and Katja, both of whom had killer hugs, but found herself laughing. Sam, Fig, and Ayda were hugging, Ostentatia and Penny were hollering in victory, Adaine and Zelda were high-fiving, Danielle was twirling Toast around again, and even Aelwyn was obviously pleased, a triumphant grin on her face before Adaine pulled her into a hug.

“Wait, what’s the prize?” Ostentatia asked, suddenly stopping in the middle of an impromptu victory dance. As if hearing her, the Arthur Aguefort projection vanished in a spin of glittering light, and there was another glow just above Aunt Corsica, an envelope appearing above her hands.

“Here’s the prize.” Aunt Corsica held it up, walking up to the group. They all stared at it curiously, but no one made a move to actually accept the envelope until Antiope felt Katja push her forward.

“Well done, girls.” Aunt Corsica said with a smile, passing the envelope over to Antiope.

“What is it, what is it?” Penny asked, bouncing on her toes. 

Antiope opened the envelope carefully, respectfully, and pulled out the small slip of paper from within. She stared at it.

The rest of the girls all around her stared as well, the students from the other groups had gathered around them, waiting to see what the mysterious prize was. Even the teachers were leaning in close. 

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Aelwyn said.

“It’s a coupon to Basrar’s,” Antiope said, turning it over in her hands to make sure it wasn’t fake. But what she saw only made her sputter. “An _expired_ coupon to Basrar’s!” 

“This is what happens when Aguefort bankrupts himself.” A student said from somewhere among the groups around them. 

“Basrar would probably honour an expired coupon, right?” Zelda asked, getting shrugs and a few ‘yeah, probably’s from the others.

“All of that… for an expired coupon,” Katja said, before bursting out into snickers. “We didn’t even get to keep any of the stuff we found!”

That triggered a small wave of giggles from the others, their victory barely undercut by the underwhelming reward. 

“Well, that’s that.” Professor Runstaff said, clapping her hands. “Everyone onto the buses!” 

As everyone got herded onto the buses, Antiope and the other girls still stuck close together, laughing about how absolutely pointless the entire Event had been.

An entire day of terrorizing a city and saving her friends from death, all for an expired coupon. Incredible.

“I did not enjoy the danger, but I do think this was an overall positive experience,” Ayda said once they were on board the bus, once again sticking together. 

“Yeah! Today was great!” Kristen said. “Not counting the kidnapping.”

“I think the ‘not counting the kidnapping’ is implied,” Aelwyn said, tucking some hair behind her ears. “I rate it a solid five out of ten on the community service scale. Could’ve been worse.” 

“It was a girl’s day out on and under the town!” Danielle beamed, getting a high-five from Kristen.

“It _would_ be fun to go to Basrar’s with you all at some point to celebrate our victory,” Fig said. “Coupon or no.” 

“I think the kidnapped people should pay for the ones that saved all your stuff.” Sam piped up, getting a playful bat on the shoulder from Ostentatia. 

Antiope chuckled, before an idea popped into her head. “Basrar’s sounds super fun, but…” 

Her pause caught the attention of the others, who all looked at her curiously. Antiope cleared her throat, before looking towards Adaine, Aelwyn, Ayda, Fig, and Kristen in particular. “If you girls are interested, us Maidens are actually going to be going on a mission pretty soon. I don’t know if Zelda had told Gorgug about any of it, but it’s supposed to be pretty hectic. Protecting a Fairy Queen, going to some party, pretty fun stuff. And we could use some extra hands for it.” 

“Oh my gosh, yes!” Danielle clapped her hands together. “That would be so exciting!”

“Like a _second_ Girl’s Day Out!” Ostentatia said.

“Yes, yes, a hundred times yes!” Kristen was bouncing in her seat. “We can have massive sleepovers!” 

“A sleepover with more girls my age sounds very exciting. And an interesting mission to go with it.” Ayda said.

“I can _totally_ clear my schedule for that,” Fig said with a grin, already pulling out her crystal.

“I’d love to help,” Adaine said, before glancing towards her sister, who only shook her head.

“I’m trying to limit myself to one near-death experience every three months, thanks,” Aelwyn said, before relaxing a little. “I appreciate the offer, though.” 

“We’ll have to text you all the details,” Sam said. “It’ll be great!”

“What will the boys do while we’re gone?” Adaine asked, turned around in her seat to face most of them with her hands on the top of the seat and her chin resting on top. 

“They’ll figure something out, won’t they?” Katja asked. “They can entertain themselves.”

“They can have their own boy’s day out, they’ll survive.” Antiope waved a hand, settling down in her seat while the others smiled and chattered amongst themselves about the day, and their upcoming plans. “But for now, we can just enjoy our victory. And our expired coupon.”

**Author's Note:**

> yeehaw sdfsdfjsdsdf this was so fun to write!!!!!! Shoutout again to my paired artist for this fic, AJ!!!!!! Go check them out on lovillain on tumblr!!!!!!!


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